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STARLIGHT, 


OR 


NOTES  ON  THE  WORLD  AND  THE 
WORLD'S  FAIR  AT  ST.  LOUIS ; 

RELIGION 


AND  THE 


RACE  PROBLEM. 


BY 


CLAY  DANDRIDGE, 
of  Ripplemcad,  Va« 


•39  a kjP  UL  A  £j 


8T.  LOUIS: 
1903. 


STARLIGHT, 

OR 

NOTES  ON  THE  WORLD  AND  THE 
WORLD'S  FAIR  AT  ST.  LOUIS ; 

RELIGION 


AND  THE 

RACE  PROBLEM. 


BY 


CLAY  DANDRIDGE, 
of  Ripplemead,  Va* 


ST.  LOUIS: 
1903. 


The  article  entitled,  “Lincoln  and  the  Emancipation  Proc¬ 
lamation  ”  was  copyrighted,  1899,  by  the 
S.  S.  McClure  Company. 


PREFACE. 


A  little  more  than  a  century  ago  Patrick  Henry,  with 
his  hand  raised  to  his  ear  and  his  eyes  turned  toward  the 
mighty  forests  and  plains  to  the  west  of  him,  stood  in  a 
listening  attitude  on  the  Alleghany  mountains  in  dear 
“Ole”  Virginia.  “  What  do  you  hear,  sir?”  inquired  his 
companion.  “I  hear  the  tread  of  the  mightiest  nation 
the  world  has  ever  seen  —  out  yonder,”  said  Henry.  He 
had  a  vision.  It  is  now  a  reality.  From  the  top  of  the 
same  mountain  I  look  across  the  wild  Atlantic  to  Africa, 
the  coming  rival  of  America,  and  behold  a  mighty  nation 
of  free  blacks.  It  is  a  vision.  It  may  be  a  reality. 

When  people  cease  to  have  visions  they  begin  to  retro¬ 
grade.  To  help  whites  and  negroes  alike  to  see  my 
vision  I  present  in  this  little  pamphlet  a  few  of  the  best 
thoughts  of  people  who  have  had  visions. 

A  short  time  ago  the  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition 
existed  on  paper  and  in  the  minds  of  men  only.  Soon  it 
will  appear  like  a  great  book  with  thousands  of  beautiful 
illustrations,  opened  wide  before  the  eyes  of  the  world. 
It  will  be  a  grand  reality. 

Our  religion  will  deepen  and  broaden  with  the  coming 
ages.  The  grandest  vision  of  all  —  one  race  of  men  on 
earth,  with  one  religion,  one  nation,  and  one  language  — 
will  become  a  reality  in  the  hereafter.  It  may  grow  out 
of  the  ashes  of  Germany,  Great  Britain  and  America,  it 
may  be  white,  yellow  or  black,  who  can  say? 

On  a  peace  basis  it  would  no  doubt  be  yellow,  but  on  a 
war  basis  we  can  make  it  white.  This  is  the  time  for 
the  different  branches  of  the  white  race  to  begin  to 
fraternize  in  earnest. 

Some  time  I  hope  to  publish  a  paper,  “  The  Sons  of 
Lee  and  Grant,”  in  which  the  women  and  the  young  men 
of  the  North,  the  South  and  the  East  and  the  West  may 
discuss  the  “  race  problem  ”  in  all  its  phases. 

(3) 


4 


The  G.  A.  R.’s  and  the  U.  C.  V.’s  must  “  go  ’way  back 
and  sit  down.”  Bless  their  old  souls,  they  fought  like 
lions,  but  they  did  not  dispose  of  the  negro  properly. 

When  the  women  of  America  render  their  decision  the 
negroes  will  be  sent  to  Africa.  C.  D. 


NOTES  ON  THE  WORLD. 


Tbe  following  is  a  letter  to  my  father  written  in  re¬ 
sponse  to  inquiries  on  several  subjects,  Dec.  14,  1902:  — 

Dear  Father  —  Socrates  the  Pagan  Greek  died  fora 
principle.  You  have  fought  and  lived,  and  will  die  for  a 
principle.  Have  no  fears.  Follow  on  in  the  steps  of 
Lee.  There  is  some  innate  something  in  man  that 
shines  brighter,  that  is  clearer  and  better  than  Chris¬ 
tianity.  It  was  shown  conspicuously  to  the  world 
in  the  li\es  of  Confucius,  Socrates,  Darwin,  Washing¬ 
ton  and  Lee.  Christianity  appeals  to  the  feelings:  the 
lives  of  the  world’s  great  men  appeal  to  reason  —  cold, 
fearless,  and  clear  cut. 

After  sixteen  years  of  study  and  observation  in  both 
hemispheres,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there 
is  but  one  God — the  Great  Spirit  of  the  Indian.  He 
seems  to  be  infinite;  we  are  finite.  How  can  the  finite 
comprehend  the  infinite?  That  the  world  has  been 
shackled  from  time  immemorial  by  this  religion  or  that 
religion  is  a  mystery  to  me.  I  believe  that,  in  the  whole, 
one  God  only  has  predominated  in  the  minds  of  men. 

Christianity  and  the  various  other  forms  of  religion, 
that  have  been  foisted  on  the  masses  by  a  few  shrewd 
men,  have  kept  this  old  world  of  ours  bathed  in  blood. 
Religion  or  “  humanity  ”  is  now  being  used  as  a  pretext 
upon  which  to  start  wars.  The  masses  are  kept  —  by 
religions  chiefly  —  in  a  state  of  confusion  continually. 
They  know  not  what  to  do.  What  a  pity  it  is  that  they 
are  led  to  misunderstand  one  another!  Why  is  this 
done?  Why,  to  supply  good  jobs  for  a  class  of  trades¬ 
men  whom  we  call  priests,  preachers,  etc. 

How  many  more  centuries,  I  wonder,  must  roll  by 
before  all  men  can  look  at  this  beautiful  world,  with  its 
mysterious  forms  of  life,  its  towering  mountains,  its 
rolling  seas,  and  agree  that  one  great  God  controls  all 

(5) 


G 


things?  When  that  time  comes  men  will  quit  wasting 
time  and  means  in  the  propagation  and  dissemination  of 
this  or  that  religion,  and  education  proper  will  begin. 

To  be  good  and  live  right,  as  the  great  God  has 
given  to  each  of  us  the  light  —  the  reason  —  to  see 
the  right  should  be  the  chief  aim  of  every  man. 
But,  the  child’s  reason  has  been,  and  is  being, 
dwarfed  by  the  prejudices  of  teachers  and  parents. 
Let  all  the  priests,  teachers,  and  preachers  come  to  one 
common  level  and  confess  their  ignorance  on  matters 
relative  to  the  future  state  of  man  — Ct  Honesty  is  the 
best  policy.”  For  the  sake  of  posterity  we  should  be 
honest  and  express  freely  in  words  our  honest  convic - 
tions.  As  an  humble  teacher  I  bow  reverently  before  the 
Almighty  and  confess  my  ignorance  to  him.  Of  course 
all  orthodox  churchmen  will  very  readily  see  (?)  my 
ignorance  on  the  question  of  religion.  They  saw  (?) 
Thomas  Pain’s  ignorance. 

To  me  Jesus  Christ  is  the  best  of  all  the  Jews  and  a 
great  teacher  —  that  and  nothing  more.  Confucius, 
Plato,  Newton,  Galileo,  Jefferson,  Darwin  and  many 
others  have  been  my  teachers  also,  but  I  refuse  to  yield 
my  right  to  think  to  any  other  creature.  When  I  was  a 
child,  nestled  in  nature’s  lap  on  the  bosom  of  the  Alleg- 
hanies  my  thinking  began,  and  the  religions  and  preju¬ 
dices  of  other  men  interfered  but  little  with  it.  A  child 
of  nature  I  am,  as  you  know.  To  young  people  I  say: 
Think,  think,  think  for  yourselves!  There  is  no  tariff 
on  brains,  thank  God.  The  poorest  man  can  think. 

Good  living  and  prosperous  times  are  the  arch  enemies 
of  good  thinking.  The  sterile  spots  of  earth  produce 
thinkers  —  Switzerland,  Scotland,  New  England,  Vir¬ 
ginia,  all  mountainous  regions.  Talmage  says:  il  Show 

me  a  great  man  and  I  will  show  you  that  he  came  down 

—  • 

from  the  mountains.” 

Wars  and  hardships  call  out  a  nation’s  thinkers,  and 
in  other  ways  their  effects  are  beneficial.  Commercial 
wars  like  all  other  wars  are  disastrous  to  some  and  ben¬ 
eficial  to  others.  If  all  of  us  could  be  in  the  trusts  I 
would  be  in  favor  of  trusts.  Even  though  competition 


7 


at  home  might  be  destroyed  we  would  still  have,  as  a 
nation  of  trusts,  sufficient  competition  with  the  rest  of 
the  world  to  keep  the  rust  off  of  us. 

When  the  white  race  of  Europe,  America,  and  Aus¬ 
tralasia  have  borne  the  “  white  man’s  burden  ”  till  they 
see  the  foolishness  of  it  they  will  unite  in  one  great 
world  power  and  throw  it  off,  i.  e.,  they  will  colonize 
alien  races  and  give  yellows,  blacks  and  browns  self- 
government. 

Sooner  or  later  this  dreamt-of  world  power,  whose 
head  will  not  be  president,  king  or  kaiser,  but  a  repre¬ 
sentative  assembly  and  court  of  the  best  and  wisest  men 
on  earth,  wearing  the  crown  of  olive  leaves  and  the  title 
of  Friend  to  Country,  will  be  engaged  in  a  struggle 
with  the  yellow  race  for  the  supremacy  of  the  world,  and 
perchance,  negotiating  treaties  with  the  inhabitants  of 
Mars.  We  underestimate,  I  fear,  the  great  dormant 
forces  in  China,  and  as  Wu  says,  we  may  awaken  her  all 
too  soon.  Napoleon  said  in  reference  to  China:  “  Yon¬ 
der  lies  a  giant  sleeping;  let  him  sleep.”  Remember, 
the  Chinese  invented  gunpowder,  and  they  may  invent 
some  compound  extract  of  radium  that  will  blow  the 
white  race  to  heaven. 

We  must  iC  do  them  ”  by  the  use  of  our  inventions  and 
might,  for,  on  a  peace  basis  and  with  equal  rights,  they 
wou’d  crowd  us  to  the  wall. 

This  is  why  we  have  a  Chinese  Exclusion  Act.  They 
were  crowding  our  laboring  men  on  the  Pacific  coast  to 
the  wall.  I  have  witnessed  the  same  thing  in  the  Phil¬ 
ippine  Islands.  The  recent  unjust  claims  and  exactions 
made  on  China  by  the  Christian  (?)  nations  are  enough 
to  quicken  the  dead.  c(  China,  her  head  hoary  with  the 
snows  of  four  thousand,  five  huudred  years”  will  cer¬ 
tainly  bestir  herself.  Jesus  Christ  as  my  teacher  has 
told  me  not  to  force  his  religion  on  any  creature.  Oh> 
that  I  could  lift  the  shackles  from  the  brains  of  my  fellow- 
men!  that  I  could  show  them  the  beauties  of  a  God  that 
surpasses  the  God  of  Israel  a  thousandfold! 

Why  talk  on  the  question  of  religion?  People  must 
grow,  through  long  centuries,  I  fear,  up  to  the  point 


8 


where  a  few  now  stand.  Men  are  too  prejudiced  to  read 
Pain’s  Age  of  Reason. 

Yes,  education  is  good.  If  to  be  ignorant  means  to 
be  in  a  state  of  bliss,  why  not  be  a  cow?  Does  the  cow 
blush?  Is  it  the  blush  on  the  man’s  face  that  shows  his 
spiritual  side?  Yes,  I  suppose. 

But,  I  am  inclined  to  the  views  of  Epictetus,  the  stoic 
of  Rome.  The  spiiitual  side  of  man,  the  soul,  if  you 
please,  is  only  a  finer  grade  of  muscle,  blood,  and  bone. 

Let  the  forces,  the  waves,  set  in  motion  by  us  be  for 
the  right  and  they  will  bear  ships  filled  with  precious 
treasures  to  the  people  of  that  dreamt-of  world  power. 

The  life  of  our  Republic  depends  upon  the  proper 
solution  of  several  grave  questions. 

The  first,  in  magnitude,  is  the  Race  Problem.  You,  my 
dear  father,  fought  —  with  Lee  for  a  principle —  to  pre¬ 
serve  your  lawful  rights  and  properly,  to  preserve  the 
white  race  in  all  its  integrity,  to  keep  the  greatest  good 
at  the  front  to  guide  the  ship.  Socrates  said:  t(  I  will  not 
put  the  question,  because  it  is  against  the  law.” 

For  trying  to  enforce  the  law  Socrates  drank  the  poi¬ 
son  hemlock  and  died.  The  administration  that  attempts 
to  enforce  the  law,  as  it  relates  to  negroes,  in  this 
country  of  ours  must  drink  the  “  poison  hemlock  ” —  pop¬ 
ular  condemnation  —  and  die.  It  will  find  itself  unable 
to  enforce  the  law  which  a  partisan  political  jumble  of 
sentiment  and  nonsense  erected  for  the  benefit  of  the 
blacks  and  yet,  not  so  much  for  the  benefit  of  the  blacks, 
as  to  cudgle  certain  white  people  in  this  country. 

It  has  been  said  that  where  a  people  hold  a  great 
prejudice  a  great  principle  is  at  the  core  of  it.  So  it  is: 
the  preservation  of  the  white  race  is  paramount  to 
English  common  law7  and  American  constitutions.  The 
Jews  made  a  white  God.  I  commend  them  for  it.  Is 
His  Majesty,  Uncle  Sam,  to  be  a  white  man  or  a  mottled 
dwarf  —  a  compound  of  white,  Negro,  Filipino,  and 
Chinese? 

Here  is  my  remedy  for  the  Race  Problem:  “And 
Abram  said  unto  Lot,  Let  there  be  no  strife,  I  pray  thee, 
between  me  and  thee,  and  between  my  herdmen  and  thy 


9 


herdmen;  for  we  be  brethren.  Is  not  the  whole  land 
before  thee?  Separate  thyself,  I  pray  thee,  from  me:  if 
thou  wilt  take  the  left  hind,  then  I  will  go  to  the  right; 
or  if  thou  depart  to  the  right  hand,  then  I  will  go  to  the 
left.” 

Abraham  ought  to  be  a  patron  saint  to  all  of  us,  for,  so 
far  as  I  know,  he  was  the  first  to  propose  arbitration. 
We,  blacks  and  whites,  may  be  brothers,  but  the  white 
man  refuses  to  recognize  his  black  brother. 

Oh,  there  are  one  or  two  rare  exceptions,  but  they  are 
full  of  idiosyncrasies. 

When  we  have  colonized  the  negroes  we  should  give 
them  autonomy  and  independence  as  soon  as  possible; 
the  Filipinos  and  Chinese  should  be  dealt  with  in  like 
manner. 

Independence  for  negroes,  independence  for  Filipinos; 
two  birds  with  one  stone. 

This  act  will  purify  and  elevate  the  white  race,  for  by 
it  justice  will  have  been  meted  out  to  inferiors. 

Then  the  alien  races  will  have  a  better  opinion  of  us, 
and  will  adopt  some  of  our  customs.  In  colonies  they 
would  be  our  wards  for  a  time  but,  unlike  the  Indians, 
they  will  be  self-supporting. 

Any  attempt  to  incorporate  another  race  or  races  into 
our  body,  social  and  politic,  will  fail.  We  hold  too  much 
prejudice  against  them. 

Since  looking  back  at  the  Filipinos  from  this  land  of 
the  free  (?)  and  since  my  soldier-anger  has  cooled  down 
I  have  changed  from  a  desire  to  crush  them  to  a  desire 
to  free  them.  If  they  can't  govern  themselves,  at  least, 
let  them  have  the  satisfaction  of  trying  to  do  it.  No 
race  is  good  enough  to  govern  another  race.  Australians 
and  Canadians  live  peaceably  under  the  British  because 
they  are  of  the  same  race. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine  should  be  more  clearly  defined 
and  better  understood  by  both  Europe  and  the  Americas. 
Some  day  we’ll  be  called  upon  to  fight  and  we  won’t 
know  where  we  are  “at.”  For  lack  of  a  big  navy  we 
may  pay  out  billions. 

What  does  the  Democratic  party  need  in  1904?  The 


10 


sagacity  of  a  Jefferson,  the  justice  of  a  Marshall,  the 
goodness  of  a  Lee,  and  the  bulldog  tenacity  of  a  Cleve¬ 
land.  And  may  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  rank  and 
file  of  our  party  be  patience,  peace  aud  sanity,  is  the  hope 
of  your  son,  Clay. 

P.  S.  Summary.  —  One  God;  the  triumph  of  right, 
justice  and  truth;  the  federation  of  Anglo-Saxon  and 
Saxons;  colonization  and  police  duty  for  alien  races; 
co-operation  on  the  socialist  plan  amongst  the  federated 
ivhite  people;  no  president,  king,  or  emperor,  but  a 
council  of  good,  wise  men;  the  Bible  to  be  used  as  an 
untrustworthy  history  of  the  Jews  but  to  be  studied  on 
account  of  the  wisdom  it  contains  from  such  men  as 
Solomon  and  Jesus  Christ. 

The  taproot  of  our  religion  is  gradually  growing 
downward  to  a  soil  that  will  give  it  more  life  and  beauty. 
May  stagnation  never  come  to  our  race.  C. 

A  short  talk  made  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1903:  Fellow- 
citizens:  To-day  we  are  six  score  and  seven  years  old. 
The  flame  of  love  for  liberty  is  now  burning  in  every  true 
American  heart.  We  delight  to  recall  to  memory  the  life- 
work  of  our  great  and  good  ancestors.  Brave  and  un¬ 
selfish  were  the  men  and  women  who  fought  for  and 
founded  this  nation  of  liberty-lovers!  Many  of  us  are 
cognizant  of  the  fact  that  questions  equally  as  grave  and 
momentous  as  those  which  moved  our  forefathers  to  per¬ 
form  great  deeds  in  1776  confront  us  at  this  very  moment. 
Then,  while  our  hearts  are  aglow  with  patriotic  ardor  on 
account  of  the  deeds  of  our  ancestors,  let  us  resolve  to 
meet  the  oncoming  crisis  with  the  common  sense  of  a 
Franklin,  the  astute  genius  of  a  Jefferson,  the  honesty, 
candor,  aud  unselfishness  of  a  Washington. 

Sober  thought  is  the  greatest  need  of  the  hour. 

We  have  mingled  with  inferior  beings  so  much  that  our 
thoughts  as  well  as  our  songs  savor  of  the  u  rag-time. ” 
We  must  cast  out  those  destroying  twin  devils  —  Greed 
and  Immorality.  We  must  have  more  faith  in  one 
another,  more  forgiveness  for  one  auother  —  more  trust 
and  less  distrust.  Jesus  Christ  of  Nazareth,  and  George 


11 


Washington  of  Virginia,  the  lives  of  whom  we  cannot 
interpret  otherwise  than  as  gifts  to  us  from  the  Most 
High,  ought  to  be  chieftains  amongst  our  exemplars. 
Except  the  strife  that  must  come  where  the  bad  is  being 
supplanted  by  the  good  no  strife  must  be  permitted  to 
enter  into  our  affairs.  If  it  is  not  congenial  for  us  to 
live  in  the  same  house  with  our  brother  Rastus,  if  we 
can  no  longer  give  him  freedom  and  justice  then  it  be¬ 
comes  our  duty  to  build  for  him  a  new  house  and  to  work 
out  for  him  a  new  salvation.  If  Europeans  cannot  con¬ 
form  to  our  peculiar  institutions  and  to  our  standard  of 
living  the  gates  should  be  shut  for  a  time,  and  “  benevo¬ 
lent  assimilation  n  should  go  on  on  the  inside  only,  other¬ 
wise  the  government  that  our  forefathers  established  and 
that  we  love  may  pass  away  into  a  state  of  “  innocuous 
desuetude.” 

We  do  not  care  to  be  Europeanized,  but  we  would 
Americanize  Europe.  As  a  result  of  immigration  greater 
dangers  threaten  us  from  within  than  from  without. 

This  day  our  President  has  flashed  ahnessage  around  the 
world  within  a  few  hours  of  time. 

We  are  a  people  possessing  marvelous  powers. 

God  grant  that  these  powers  may  be  used  for  the  bet¬ 
terment  of  mankind,  and  grant  that  this  country  may 
continue  to  produce  such  men  as  Ben.  Franklin  and  Geo. 
Washington. 

Here  is  Carnegie  at  Barrow-in-Furness,  England:  “In 
all  matters  of  iron  and  steele  the  child  has  been  borne 
upon  the  shoulders  of  the  parent.  If  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
had  been  prairie  land,  there  would  have  been  little  left 
in  the  world  but  the  conquering  old  lady  and  her  family, 
all  under  one  roof,  under  one  flag,  a  self-sustaining  em¬ 
pire  under  free  trade,  with  probably  200,000,000  of  our 
English-speaking  race,  and  a  home  market  so  big  as  to 
give  control  of  neutral  markets.  No  question  of  protec¬ 
tion  or  preferential  tariffs  then  to  disturb  us. 

Besides  all  this,  we  should  have  been  able  to  enforce 
peace  among  nations. 

Gentlemen,  unfortunately  an  ocean  exists  where  we 
should  have  preferred  prairies,  but  it  is  traversed  in 


12 


about  the  same  time  as  the  3,000  miles  of  land  between 
Montreal  or  New  York  on  the  Atlantic  and  San  Francisco 
and  Victoria  on  the  Pacific.  Who  so  bold  as  to  predict 
that  never  is  our  race  to  succeed  in  converting  the  ocean, 
hitherto  a  barrier  to  your  branches,  into  the  pathway  to 
reunion  of  the  two  once-united  branches?  Not  I! 

My  faith  is  unshakable  that  some  day  this  will  be 
accomplished,  and  that  instead  of  being  two  small  islands 
here,  alien  to  the  European  Continent,  you  will  look 
across  the  sea  to  your  own  children  in  Canada  and  the 
United  States  and  become  once  more  the  mother  member 
of  the  dominant  power  of  the  world.” 

Mr.  Carnegie’s  dream  may  be  brought  about  quickly 
through  co-operation  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  in  the  colonization  of  their  negroes. 
Grant  that  it  may. 

The  Chinese  are  scavengers  —  maggots, —  and  they  may 
yet  whip  the  world;  not  with  shot  and  shell  but  with 
dirt  and  smell.  *  *  * 

Parents  and  teachers  should  instruct  boys  and  girls 
when  they  are  young  in  the  “  unwritten  chapter  ”  of 
physiology,  give  them  a  few  good,  clean  papers,  maga¬ 
zines  and  books  to  read,  and  help  them  in  every  way 
possible  to  develop  a  well-rounded,  beautiful  form  of 
person.  What  on  earth  is  more  beautiful  than  a  perfect 
man  or  woman? 

When  our  present  crop  of  rich  men  die  a  portion  — 25 
per  cent  of  the  wealth  of  all  those  worth  a  million  — 
ought  to  go  to  Uncle  Sam,  and  be  used  to  drain  the  fifty 
thousand  square  miles  of  swamp  land  along  the  Missis¬ 
sippi  River,  to  preserve  forests,  fUh,  and  game  to  beau¬ 
tify  our  land  as  Greece  was  beautified  in  the  Age  of  Peri¬ 
cles,  and  to  help  educate,  refine  aud  lift  up  the  poor. 
Why  should  any  one  man  have  more  than  a  million 
dollars? 

Why,  my  countrymen,  I  believe  our  rich  men  —  most 
of  them  —  are  mad.  We  should,  by  ballot,  relieve  them 
of  the  burden  that  is  crushing  out  their  souls.  It  would 
be  a  godsend  to  them.  The  government  should  gradually 


13 


acquire  control  of  all  public  utilities  and  compel  capital 
and  labor  to  arbitrate. 

Strikes  and  riots,  overwork,  underpay,  and  oppression 
are  a  disgrace  to  our  civilization.  Let  us  go  to  little 
New  Zealand  and  learn  a  lesson. 

We  must  alter,  abolish,  and  make  laws  as  our  conditions 
change.  Think  of  it!  Our  good  forefathers  wrote  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  neglected  to  abolish 
slavery,  or  even  to  provide  for  the  gradual  discontinu¬ 
ance  of  slavery.  If  they  could  have  seen  the  dreadful 
war  that  rent  the  land  and  the  tenderest  ties  of  a  common 
people  would  they  have  left  slavery  alone?  Would  they 
have  left  the  negro  in  this  country?  It  would  have  been 
comparatively  easy  to  settle  then. 

It  will  be  easy  to  settle  yet  if  all  white  people  will  hang 
together. 

I  stand  in  wonder  before  the  beauty  and  majesty  of 
things  about  me;  others  “  weep  and  wail”  in  the 
“  presence  of  the  Almighty.”  For  sixteen  years  I’ve 
wandered  and  wondered  about  the  world,  I’ve  read  about 
it,  I’ve  run  ’round  it,  I’ve  examined  it  closely.  I’d  like 
to  go  up  in  a  balloon  and  look  back  at  it.  It’s  the  most 
wonderful  toy  a  boy  ever  played  with. 

Once  it  was  large,  oh,  very  large,  now  it  is  small  —  too 
small  for  the  people  it  holds.  We’d  like  to  go  to  new 
worlds.  How  I’d  like  to  go  to  such  a  country  as  Ken¬ 
tucky  was  when  Daniel  Boone  was  young.  Houston, 
Crockett,  and  Boone ;  Webster,  Clay  and  Calhoun  —  my 
sestette.  The  higher  we  climb  on  the  Mountain  of 
Knowledge  the  more  pleasing  the  landscape  becomes,  the 
deeper  our  perceptions  grow.  The  accomplished  brain 
carries  sweet  music  to  the  soul.  It  says,  u  peace,  be 
still.” 

As  the  culture  of  Greece  was  overcome  by  the  u  Mace¬ 
donian  Phalanx  ”  so  was  the  culture  of  the  “  Old  South  ” 
overcome  by  the  Yankee  Phalanx.  The  Constitution  was 
disregarded,  Virginia  was  robbed  of  one-third  of  her 
territory  —  clearly  an  unconstitutional  act  —  and  now 
the  love  for  liberty  in  the  hearts  of  the  Filipinos  must 
succumb  to  Yankee  greed,  And  yet,  in  the  face  of  all 


14 


this,  Yankees  will  presume  to  dictate  to  the  South  rela¬ 
tive  to  the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments.  We 
can  only  laugh  at  them. 

Father  Ryan,  like  Demosthenes,  has  pronounced  the 
funeral  of  the  “  Old  South. ”  Lee  did  not,  like  Isocrates, 
end  his  useful  life,  but  lived  and  proved  to  us  that  the 
“  pen  is  mightier  than  the  sword. ”  Reason,  not  might, 
is  the  highest  court.  Such  an  eminent  man  as  Charles 
Francis  Adams  says:  “The  North  won  by  might  and  not 
by  right.” 

Lincoln  and  McKinley,  both  good  men,  were,  like 
Philip  of  Macedon,  assassinated  because  they  stood  for 
principles  that  were  fundamentally  wrong.  Lincoln  is 
one  of  my  patron  saints;  McKinley  got  my  first  vote. 
Lincoln  and  McKinley  were  right ;  their  party  was  wrong. 
Who  will  deny  this? 

Alexander’s  attempt  to  found  a  world  empire  with  Hel¬ 
lenic  forms  of  life  failed.  His  soldiers  perished  in  India 
from  malaria  and  dysentery,  as  ours  have  in  Cuba  and 
the  Philippines. 

As  Oriental  habits  spoiled  and  destroyed  Alexander  so 
will  Oriental  habits  spoil  and  destroy  us.  Let’s  throw 
them  to  the  winds. 

The  pen  of  Jefferson  loosened  the  shackles  on  all 
Europe;  it  conquered  where  the  sword  of  Napoleon 
failed.  I  beg  for  a  return  to  the  ideas  and  simplicity  of 
Jefferson  in  this,  his  and  our  beloved  land  of  the  free. 

We  are  aping  royalty ;  we  are  fast  drifting  away  from 
the  ideas  of  the  fathers.  Perhaps  nothing  but  a  good 
threshing  will  bring  us  to  our  senses. 

Every  American  father  should  hold  his  daughter’s 
honor  in  as  high  esteem  as  did  Virginius  that  of  Virginia. 
Some  men  are  too  coarse  to  pass  a  woman  on  the  streets 
in  a  respectful  manner. 

Better  that  fathers  drive  daggers  through  the  hearts 
of  their  daughters  than  give  them  over  to  the  company  of 
lecherous  devils  who  are  disguised  in  sheep’s  clothing  — 
“  society  men  ”  we  call  them  sometimes. 

The  mingling  of  three  elements  in  England  —  the 
Jewish,  the  Roman-Greco,  and  the  Teutonic,  produced 


15 


the  hardiest  and  the  brainiest  men  and  women  the  world 
has  ever  seen  —  the  Greeks  not  excepted.  Shakespere, 
Newton,  and  Darwin  outshine  any  half  dozen  Greeks 
you  can  mention. 

Away  with  the  Hamilton  idea  of  centralization!  It 
has  almost  destroyed  our  Republic.  “We  will  be  great 
only  when  we  stand  for  liberty  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word,  and  not  because  of  our  army  and  navy.”  It  was 
Roman  oppression  that  destroyed  the  liberties  of  Greece. 
What  destroyed  our  liberties?  I  answer,  immigration 
and  the  enforcement  of  the  Hamilton  idea  upon  us  by 
the  sword.  If  a  man  of  family  has  a  good  “patch  of 
ground  ”  should  he  say  to  Europeans:  Come  and  take 
it?  —  or  should  he  give  it  to  his  children? 

“Charity  begins  at  home.”  America  needs  no  longer 
to  depend  upon  European  maternity  for  a  population. 
When  we  rid  ourselves  of  alien  races  and  begin  to  breed 
up  we  can  grow  our  own  population,  on  our  own  little 
patch  —  the  United  States. 

The  native-born  American,  if  he  is  born  poor,  is  to-day 
the  most  helpless  citizen  in  our  country.  He  can’t 
compete  with  foreigners  in  the  field  of  labor;  he  can’t 
live  like  a  foreigner. 

Stop  immigration!  Put  up  the  bars!  Bolt  the  gates ! 
In  twenty  years’  time  we  can  rid  the  country  of  alien 
races  and  “benevolently  assimilate”  the  Europeans 
amongst  us.  The  only  hope  for  the  one  million  Jews  in 
the  United  States  is  amalgamation  with  Gentiles.  If 
they  refuse  to  mix  with  us  they  will  eventually  fare  here 
as  they  are  now  faring  in  Russia. 

If  Gentiles  acquire  mentality  through  amalgamation 
with  Jews  they  will  also  acquire  that  damnable  greed 
which  is  a  characteristic  of  the  Jew. 

For  the  sake  of  peace  and  homogeneity  the  Gentiles  of 
the  United  States  can  afford  to  “  absorb  ”  the  number 
of  “  God’s  own  ”  now  in  the  country,  but  for  God’s 
sake  let  Russia  keep  the  five  million  that  she  now  has. 
On  a  Sunday  morning  I  looked  over  Petticoat  Lane, 
London,  and  decided  that  when  God  chose  the  Jews  he 


16 


showed  very  poor  taste.  Still  I  pity  the  desolate  poor 
among  them. 

While  the  head  of  the  British  Empire  —  Great  Brit¬ 
ain —  is  kept  right,  all  will  go  well  with  that  great 
empire. 

If  govern  other  races  in  colonies  we  must,  our  head  — 
the  United  States  proper  —  must  be  kept  right.  Boodlers 
and  boodling  must  go  to  Boodlejara. 

Nature’s  monstrosities  have  no  attraction  for  me; 
never  have  I  paid  a  cent  to  see  the  two-headed  calf.  I’m 
a  Greek.  I  will  study  the  beautiful  iu  nature;  I  would 
save  the  best  plant,  the  best  animal,  the  best  race  of  men. 

Are  not  the  rich  of  America  and  the  degenerate  noble 
of  Europe  forming  an  aristocracy  that  will  be  more  in¬ 
solent  and  oppressive  as  time  grows?  Do  you  “  bank 
on”  the  patriotism  of  the  rich  men  of  America?  They 
will  deliver  you,  “  bag  and  baggage,”  into  the  hands 
of  an  oligarchy.  American  dominion  is  increasing.  Is 
American  virtue,  American  patriotism,  increasing?  Our 
usurers  and  tax-gatherers  may  keep  some  Mithridates  — 
some  Aguinaldo  —  in  the  field  continuallv. 

Crassus  the  richest  man  in  Rome,  chose  Syria  for  its 
treasures  but  he  was  defeated,  killed,  and  had  his  pallid 
mouth  stuffed  with  gold.  What  will  happen  to  our 
greedy  Crassuse?? 

If  I  were  a  millionaire  I’d  rather  give  away  all  but  one 
hundred  thousand  and  live  in  peace,  without  fear  of  the 
assassin’s  bullet. 

The  Germans  fought  in  the  Roman  ranks,  in  the 
English  ranks,  in  the  Yankee  ranks. 

Hirelings  against  freedom  sometimes.  Americans, 
don’t  do  it. 

It  was  the  Romans  who  conquered  the  Jews,  burnt 
their  temple  built  by  Solomon  to  Jehovah,  and  scattered 
them  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  earth. 

How  many  millionaires  were  there  in  the  United  States 
prior  to  the  civil  war? 

The  Yankees  and  their  hirelings  fell  on  the  Old  South 
like  a  lot  of  hungry  wolves,  and,  on  account  of  cheap 
labor,  spoliation,  and  rascality,  they  have  fattened  as 


17 


people  never  fattened  before.  No  desire  to  stir  up  strife. 
I  simply  record  history. 

There  are  no  Yankees  and  no  rebels  now.  We  are  all 
Americans,  and  are  soon  to  be,  I  hope,  white  Americans. 

The  Indian  said :  u  The  white  man  was  not  good  enough 
to  kill  us.” 

Were  the  Babylonians,  the  Romans,  the  Crusaders,  the 
Spaniards,  the  English,  the  Russians,  good  enough  to  kill 
the  Jews?  I  fear  that  Americans  too,  will  kill  them  un¬ 
less  they  get  wise  and  intermarry  with  Gentiles. 

They  say:  “All  we  ask  is  to  be  let  alone.”  That  was 
all  that  Jefferson  Davis  asked  for  the  Old  South,  that  was 
all  the  Boers  asked  in  South  Africa,  but  it  did  no  good. 

The  farmers  of  America  are  be' ween  two  millstones  — 
labor  and  capital.  A  peaceful  solution  of  the  difficulties 
between  the  laborer  and  the  capitalist  is  wanted.  The 
farmers  ought  to  study  the  question  and  by  their  votes 
bring  about  a  peaceful  and  just  solution. 

The  laborers  want  more  of  the  fruits  of  their  toil,  more 
than  29  per  cent  of  what  they  produce,  and  less  slavery ; 
the  capitalists  want  more  humanity,  more  security  and 
less  profit  on  their  investments. 

In  order  to  get  the  right  to  fish  and  to  hunt,  to  cut 
wood  in  the  forests,  to  bring  about  the  abolition  of  serf¬ 
dom,  of  feudal  service,  of  tithes,  and  to  get  the  right  to 
choose  their  preachers  and  have  the  free  preaching  of  the 
gospel,  the  Germans  killed  and  burnt. 

We  commend  them  for  it.  But  it  is  not  necessary,  at 
all,  for  the  laborers  in  this  country  to  kill  and  burn  to 
get  their  rights.  They  have  the  ballot  in  their  hands. 

The  farmers  will  stand  by  them  and  help  them  out  in 
all  matters  of  justice. 

I  have  implicit  faith  in  the  honesty  of  the  average 
farmer.  The  city  has  not  corrupted  him. 

Many  laborers  are  not  honest  and  they  cannot  win 
when  they  present  dishonest  claims.  Another  way  for 
them  to  win  is  to  educate  and  quit  wasting  their  earn¬ 
ings. 

Agitators  brought  on  the  civil  war.  The  Abolitionists 
were  the  biggest  set  of  fools  this  or  any  other  country 

2 


18 


ever  saw.  They  were  not  only  fools,  but  knaves, 
hypocrites,  and  thieves.  I  speak  of  them  as  a  body. 
Of  course,  there  were  some  good  people  among  them,  but 
very  few. 

There  is  only  one  way,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  in  which  the 
Philippines  can  be  made  a  paying  colony. 

Let  our  rich  men  have  full  play  and  let  them  take  over 
all  the  Chinamen  they  want  for  labor. 

This  means  to  crowd  the  Filipinos  out  of  existence 
and  to  enslave  the  Chinamen.  Better  turn  the  Philippines 
loose,  and  get  out  of  Oriental  entanglements.  Java  and 
Sumatra  are  profitable  colonies  because  the  Dutch  are 
hard,  cruel  masters.  Why  should  we  establish  a  pro¬ 
tectorate  over  the  Philippines?  When  we  are  done  with 
them  let  Germany,  England  or  any  other  country  take 
them  up  if  they  like.  Let  others  bear  the  “  white  man’s 
burden  ”  if  they  like,  our  Uncle  Samuel  wants  none  of 
it.  Yes;  more  than  two  hundred  thousand  of  us  have 
come  back  from  the  Philippines  to  “  drag  out  miserable 
lives”  or  “  worse  for  the  wear.”  That  climate  takes 
the  vim,  the  snap  of  life  out  of  a  man. 

Like  produces  like.  Americans  were  tortured;  Fili¬ 
pinos  were  tortured. 

Personally,  I  never  abused  a  Filipino  and  they  were 
always  friendly  to  me. 

When  I  was  sick  the  teacher  and  the  priest  of  the 
village  carried  me  good  things  to  eat  and  would  have  no 
pay  for  it.  When  I  left  the  islands  they  gave  me 
“  goodies  ”  to  eat  while  en  route  home,  and  their  best 
wishes.  One  gentleman  in  Manila  showed  me  a  picture 
of  his  home  at  Pasig.  It  was  wrapped  in  flames.  He 
said:  “  The  Americanos  did  it.”  He  was  intelligent,  and 
had  an  intelligent  family  of  three  daughters  and  two 
sons.  They  had  been  reduced  from  plenty  to  a  state  of 
poverty  by  Yankee  greed.  I  could  sympathize  with  the 
man,  and  pointed  out  to  him  the  fact  that  my  own  people 
in  the  Old  South  had  been  reduced  in  like  manner.  The 
Filipinos  were  never  so  cruelly  treated  as  were  the  people 
of  our  Southern  States.  When  my  comrades  fell  at  the 
ping  of  the  bushwhacker’s  rifle  my  will  was  good  to  kill  all 


19 


the  Filipinos,  and  I  openly  advocated  the  policy  which  was 
later  carried  out  by  my  dear  old  Gen.  Jacob  H.  Smith. 
Gen.  Smith  was  a  fair-play  man,  and  I  don’t  believe  he 
ever  ordered  his  men  to  kill  women  and  children. 

War  is  not  a  Sunday-school  business,  and,  if  we  must 
have  it,  we  had  just  as  well  kill  quick  and  lively  and  be 
over  with  it.  I  want  no  more  Ci  humane  ”  wars  in  mine. 
They  are  the  most  inhuman  of  all  wars.  A  few  more 
generals  like  James  Franklin  Bell  and  Jacob  H.  Smith 
would  have  settled  the  fighting  part  of  it  in  the  Philippines 
in  half  the  time,  with  a  half  less  suffering,  and  less  than 
half  the  cost.  One  word  more  in  regard  to  our  latest 
unpleasantness.  Citizens  of  America,  why  do  you  con¬ 
demn  the  soldiers  who  went  out  to  see  the  Philippines? 
You  know  we  wanted  to  travel.  We  wanted  to  make  the 
circuit  of  the  globe. 

Rather  blame  the  Peace  Commissioners  who  formulated 
the  Treaty  of  Paris,  and  the  Senate  that  ratified  it.  It 
was  our  statesmen,  or  rather  our  lack  of  statesmen,  that 
got  us  into  trouble. 

Call  us  “  tramps,  dead  beats,  and  hobos”  if  you  will 
Some  day  you  may  “  get  up  against  the  real  thing” 
with  a  strong  nation  and  you  will  be  glad  to  have  tramps, 
dead  beats,  and  hobos  to  do  your  fighting.  Hirelings 
never  fight  well.  Great  Britain  honors  her  soldiers 
whether  they  fight  in  the  right  or  in  the  wrong.  And 
English  soldiers  are  better  for  it. 

Who  will  give  us  a  great  drama  of  the  world’s  history? 
All  history  should  be  epitomized  —  the  Bible  included. 
Only  the  short  bends  and  the  sharp  curves  in  history 
should  be  preserved.  The  child-mind  is  confused  and 
retarded  in  its  development  by  such  a  pile  of  rubbish. 

If  the  “  cosmic  lessons  of  nature  ”  are  to  be  our  basis 
of  religion,  Senator  Beveridge,  we  must  have  every 
schoolhouse  in  the  land  supplied  with  microscopes  and 
instructors  in  Biology  and  Geology.  Pain’s  “  Age  of 
Reason  ”  will  be  a  good  text-book  for  advanced  pupils. 
Speed  the  day  when  we  shall  arrive  at  such  a  solid  foun¬ 
dation  upon  which  to  rest  our  religious  wars  and  babblings. 
One  of  the  best  preachers  I  ever  knew  said  that  he  never 


20 


would  have  been  a  preacher  if  he  had  read  church  his¬ 
tory  first.  We  want  to  get  rid  of  ignorance,  bigotry 
and  superstition  just  as  soon  as  possible. 

The  Romans  looked  upon  a  suicide  as  a  soldier  who 
had  deserted  his  post.  Must  a  soldier  stay  on  post  for¬ 
ever  without  relief?  Ill-health  and  crushed  ambitions 
are  the  chief  causes  of  suicide.  If  people  of  means  will 
offer  a  kind  word,  a  little  encouragement  to  the  struggling 
mass,  they  will  prevent  suicides. 

There  are  three  great  elements  in  the  world-geosphere, 
the  solid  masses,  hydrosphere,  the  liquids,  and  atmos¬ 
phere,  the  air.  When  examined  with  the  microscope  all 
three  are  found  to  be  literally  teeming  with  life,  death 
and  decay.  This  explains  iC  out  of  death  comes  life,” 
the  great  resurrection.  So  far  as  we  can  think  the 
material  part  of  man  will  always  exist. 

The  fishes  live  near  the  surface  of  the  sea  of  water; 
we  live  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea  of  air;  the  birds  live 
high  in  the  air.  Birds  are  angels  of  sweet  song. 

Why  did  the  Jews  put  wings  on  angels  and  sweet  songs 
in  their  mouths?  Are  the  birds  and  the  bees  nearer  per¬ 
fection  than  we  are?  Who  knows? 

If  our  civilization  continues  at  the  present  rate  what 
will  man  be  a  thousand  years  hence?  A  delicate  bunch 
of  brain  wrapped  in  flannels  and  silks  and  waited  upon 
by  chemicals,  electricity,  liquid  air,  radium  and  other 
natural  forces.  Wouldn’t  you  like  to  see  the  world  one 
thousand  years  from  now? 

There  is  a  little  something  on  the  inside  of  every  one 
of  us  which  says,  Don’t  do  that,  do  this.  If  every  one 
will  be  guided  by  it  the  world  will  go  right  all  the  time. 

The  chief  object  of  the  Company  of  Jesus  was  to  hinder 
the  enlightenment  of  the  people  and  to  oppose  all  inno¬ 
vations  and  reforms,  but  thank  God,  Adam  Weisshaupt 
lived  and  founded  the  society  of  the  Illuminati. 

The  Russian,  Gen.  Suwaroff,  conquered  Poland.  As 
Kosciusko  fell  from  his  horse,  he  cried:  “This  is  the 
end  of  Poland!  ”  Thus  perished  the  once  famous  and 
mighty  Poland,  a  sacrifice  to  domestic  discord  and  to 
foreign  violence  —  the  very  things  that  the  United  States 


21 


has  most  to  fear.  My  countrymen,  we  must  hang  to¬ 
gether!  What  is  the  history  of  all  Europe  but  a  bulletin 
recounting  the  acts  of  bloody,  cruel  tyrants? 

Why  do  so  many  of  our  rich  men  build  libraries  and 
universities?  Chiefly  as  monuments  unto  themselves. 
They  like  to  see  their  names  inscribed  on  the  buildings. 
One  who  still  lives  has  placed  a  marble  statue  of  him¬ 
self  in  his  place  of  business.  He  makes  beer.  In  case 
a  professor  attempts  to  teach  anything  in  our  endowed 
universities  that  would  be  detrimental  to  capitalists  what 
happens  to  him?  He  gets  fired.  If  our  rich  men  really 
wTant  to  do  something  philanthropic  why  don’t  they  found 
places  where  boys  and  girls  can  learn  how  to  make  a 
living? 

My  model  school  is  a  great  amphitheater,  far  back 
from  our  so-called  civilization  in  the  forest  at  the  foot 
of  a  great  mountain.  It  is  full  of  paintings,  statuary, 
and  select  books.  A  half  dozen  wise  men  like  Ben 
Franklin  constitute  its  faculty.  It  has  a  large  stage  and 
the  best  dramas  may  be  seen  there. 

Learned  men  from  all  parts  of  the  earth  are  invited  to 
lecture  there  on  all  manner  of  questions.  Microscopes, 
telescopes,  and  stereopticons  are  much  used  there;  the 
“  cosmic  lessons  of  nature  ”  are  studied.  The  students 
spend  much  time  in  the  forests  of  the  mountain. 

A  model  gymnasium  and  a  machine  shop  stand  near 
by.  Sweet  music  may  be  luard  almost  every  day. 

The  study  of  Engli>h  and  the  requirements  of  good 
citizenship  are  emphasized.  Lessens  in  patriotism  are 
regularly  given. 

Men  from  the  fields  and  women  from  the  homes  and 
gardens  attend  the  school  evenings  and  Sundays.  No 
man,  no  woman,  no  child  will  be  overworked. 

The  Puritans  of  New  England  kept  King  Philip’s  head 
stuck  up  on  a  pole  in  Plymouth  for  twenty  years.  They 
sold  Philip’s  wife  and  daughter  into  slavery.  They  were 
the  most  religious  people  this  country  has  ever  seen. 

When  men  are  interested  in  what  they  are  doing,  their 
work  becomes  a  song.  Hirelings  are  seldom  interested 
in  what  they  do.  Work  for  yourself,  man. 


22 


Men  should  think  more  about  their  work  and  less 
about  beer  and  bad  women.  They  might  very  properly 
use  more  of  Shakesp3re  and  less  “  Buschbeer.” 

Great  cities,  factories,  and  commerce,  said  Jefferson, 
“  tend  to  corrupt  the  people.”  The  gross  immoralities 
of  our  cities  are  gradually  being  carried  to  the  country 
districts,  where  dwell  the  life  of  the  nation,  and  when 
any  considerable  number  of  the  country  folks  imbibe  the 
evils  of  cities  the  nation  will  go  down. 

Pat  says:  More  than  two  hundred  thousand  men 
have  been  spoiled  by  the  Philippine  racket.” 

They  are  diseased  in  both  body  and  mind.  They  can’t 
settle  down  to  good  old  humdrum  living  and  so  they 
continue  to  roam  and  dissipate  or  they  commit  suicide. 

American  officials  must  be  taught  that  they  are  the 
servants  of  the  people  and  not  the  masters  of  the  people. 

Too  many  petty  tyrants  amongst  us.  We  met  with 
them  in  the  army  of  the  Philippines.  We  see  them  here 
every  day. 

Clinging  to  an  antiquated  religion,  and  the  dissemina¬ 
tion  of  her  blood  amongst  inferior  people,  along  with 
greed  for  gold,  caused  the  downfall  of  Spain.  These  same 
things  may  cause  the  downfall  of  our  own  country. 

Let  us  beware. 

White  women  who  must  work  for  a  living  ought  to  be 
respected  just  as  white  men  who  must  work  for  a  living 
are  respected.  One  is  as  good  as  the  other.  Both  are 
better  than  the  so-called  a  four  hundred.” 

Jimmy  says:  “  The  best  thing  the  Raypublican  party 
has  given  the  country  is  free  schools,  the  worst  thing  is 
free  Nagers.” 

But  the  “  Nagers  ”  are  not  free,  Jimmy. 

Mike  says :  u  In  case  the  Dimmecrats  nominate  a  bad 
man,  and  the  Raypublicans  nominate  Theodore  Washing¬ 
ton  and  Booker  Roosevelt  I  will  vote  for  George  Wash¬ 
ington  for  President  and  Abe  Lincoln  for  Vice-President. 
I’d  make  McKinley  Secretary  of  State,  and  Jos.  W.  Folk 
Attorney -General.  When  I’m  offered  two  bad  eggs  I’ll 
suck  nather  of  them.” 

On  September  22d,  1903,  the  Jews  were  5,654  years  old. 


23 


Jesus  Christ,  their  best  man,  lived  about  1900  years  ago. 
Nearly  all  religions  start  in  the  East  —  Far  East  —  where 
the  people  are  ignorant  and  superstitious. 

Mormonism  and  Zionism  look  to  the  ignorant  classes 
for  food  and  followers. 

The  most  heinous  crimes  can’t  be  reached  by  the  law. 

The  Great  Shepherd  does  not  always  protect  the  lambs 
of  his  flock.  The  command  “Thou  sbalt  not  kill” 
ought  to  forbid  other  crimes  besides  murder. 

Let  the  social  pot  in  this  great  Republic  of  ours  boil, 
and  when  the  skim,  the  dregs,  come  to  the  top  we  must 
skim  them  off  and  throw  them  away.  Purification  of  the 
body,  social  and  politic. 

Congress  should  take  up  the  “  Monroe  Doctrine  ”  and 
define  it  in  such  a  way  that  we  will  know  where  we  are 
u  at  ”  when  some  European  nation  attempts  to  grab 
something  in  South  America. 

As  that  doctrine  now  stands  we  are  too  apt  to  get  into 
another  “  war  for  humanity’s  sake.” 

We  had  a  war  in  the  West  Indies  for  humanity’s  sake 
and  another  in  the  Philippines  for  humanity’s  sake. 
What  did  we  get?  A  lot  of  dregs  in  the  social  pot. 
What  would  the  population  of  any  Central  or  South 
American  republic  be  to  us?  A  lot  more  dregs  in  the 
social  pot. 

Divorces  should  be  granted  to  married  people  when  it 
has  been  proven  that  one  or  the  other  has  become  un¬ 
faithful.  The  Catholics  and  the  people  of  old  South 
Carolina  are  right  on  the  divorce  question.  When  it  has 
been  shown  that  two  rotten  eggs  are  living  in  wedlock 
make  them  continue  to  live  together.  A  man  should  be 
as  true  to  his  wife  as  he  would  have  his  wife  be  true  to 
him,  and  in  case  he  is  not  the  woman  has  a  right  to  a 
divorce.  Some  of  the  worst  old  reprobates  have  virtu¬ 
ous  women  tied  to  them. 

When  a  man’s  fidelity  to  church  or  to  a  secret  organi¬ 
zation  exceeds  his  fidelity  to  his  country  there  is  some¬ 
thing  wrong.  The  man  who  will  take  from  his  country 
to  build  up  his  church  or  his  secret  society  or  his  politi¬ 
cal  party  is  mean  or  narrow-minded. 


24 


Secret  societies  are  good  only  for  those  who  belong  to 
them.  Who  has  not  seen  the  more  capable  man  turned 
away  for  the  member  of  some  secret  society,  or  for  some 
member  of  a  church?  Our  Americanism  ought  to  be 
above  all  churches,  above  all  secret  societies. 

The  man  who  joins  a  secret  organization  most  gener¬ 
ally  seeks  to  get  the  advantage,  the  pull  —  rather  than 
to  benefit  his  fellow-man.  If  the  churches  had  done  their 
duty  there  would  have  been  no  need  for  secret  societies; 
if  this  government  does  its  duty  there  will  be  no  need  for 
secret  societies  in  the  future.  Our  Americanism  will  be 
above  every  other  ism. 

The  followers  of  Mormonism,  Zionism,  Spiritualism, 
have  as  much  right  to  their  beliefs  as  have  the  members 
of  any  other  church  sect  or  secret  society  to  their  beliefs. 
All  are  misguided  or  they  are  misguiding  others. 

For  beautiful  descriptions  of  sights  and  sounds  in  the 
grand  divisions  which  I  have  visited  —  Asia,  Australia, 
Africa,  Europe,  and  Noith  America  —  I  must  refer  my 
readers  to  more  imaginative  minds  and  more  facile  pens. 

To  me  all  nature  laughs,  but  the  laugh  is  often  marred 
by  the  fierce  antagonisms  of  the  animal  kingdom.  The 
end  of  wars  is  not  in  sight.  Indeed  the  world  is  riper  for 
war  to-day  than  it  has  ever  been  before. 

iC  He  that  would  be  free  must  himself  strike  the  blow.” 


THE  WORLD’S  FAIR  AT  ST.  LOUIS,  MO., 
OR  THE  “  IVORY  CITY." 

What  a  pity  that  such  magnificent  buildings  and  such 
splendid  educational  facilities  must  pass  away  in  a  few 
short  months!  It  is  the  grandest  thing  attempted  in  the 
shape  of  a  Fair  in  the  world!  Come,  see,  and  you  will  be 
convinced.  Processes  as  well  as  products  are  to  be 
shown.  ‘-'Motion  means  money,”  on  the  railway,  said 
Yoakum.  At  the  Fair  motion  will  mean  beauty,  and  the 
impartation  of  knowledge.  Think  of  it!  Twelve  hundred 
and  forty  acres  of  grouud  wriggling  with  life,  vegetable 
life,  animal  life,  steam  life,  electrical  life. 


Here,  in  truth,  boys  and  girls,  will  be  a  city  worth 
tnousands  of  miles  of  travel.  It  will  represent  the  joy¬ 
fulness  of  youth.  The  New  Jerusalem,  as  described  by 
the  Jews,  will  not  be  “in  it.”  The  “  Ivory  City”  will 
not  have  walls  of  jasper  and  streets  of  gold  but  walls  of 
glittering  natural  phenomena,  and  streets  made  cool  and 
delightful  by  living  trees  and  flowers  and  gushing 
waters.  There  will  be  more  than  twenty- five  miles  of 
roadway  inside  the  grounds,  and  the  boulevards  will  be 
shaded  by  a  great  forest  of  various  kinds  of  trees,  among 
which  will  frisk  the  pretty  gray  squirrels  and  from 
which  will  be  heard  the  songs  of  native  birds.  Verily  it 
will  excel  the  New  Jerusalem!  Nobody  but  the  birds 
will  wear  wings  here  but  there  is  to  be  a  tournament  of 
airships. 

I  fancy  I  can  see  the  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls, 
sailing  through  the  air ;  isn’t  it  a  delightful  sight? 

“  Presume  not  God  to  scan;  the  proper  study  for  man 
is  man.”  “  All  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole 
whose  body  nature  is  and  God  the  soul.”  How  much 
soul  have  you?  The  more  soul  you  have  the  more*  you 
can  see  and  feel  in  the  “Ivory  City.”  Good  people 
will  see  more  than  bad  people. 

When  you  come  to  see  the  Fair  ride  around  the 
grounds  on  the  Intramunal  Railway,  get  a  picture  of  the 
whole,  then  go  through  all  the  big  palaces  in  a  system¬ 
atic  way. 

Here  is  oue  route  begining  west  of  the  Grand  Court, 
at  the  main  entrance  :  Varied  Industries  building,  four- 
teen  acres;  cost,  $604,000;  Palace  of  Transportation, 
covers  fifteen  acres,  cost,  $700,000;  Machinery  building, 
covers  twelve  acres,  cost,  $600,000;  Electricity  building, 
covers  nine  acres;  cost,  $399,940;  Education  and  Social 
Economy  building,  covers  nine  acres;  cost,  $319,399; 
Mining  and  Metallurgy  building,  covers  nine  acres;  cost, 
$500,000;  Fisheries  building ;  U.  S.  Government  building; 
covers  nearly  four  acres;  cost,  $450,000;  Liberal  Arts 
building,  covers  nine  acres;  cost,  $160,000;  Manufac¬ 
tures  bail  ling,  covers  fourteen  acres;  cost,  $845,000, 
End  of  first  day. 


26 


On  the  second  day  visit  the  foreign  government  build¬ 
ings  west  of  Skinker  Road,  and  the  Washington  University 
buildings.  Don’t  miss  the  Olympic  games  and  the  air¬ 
ship  tournament.  Take  in  our  insular  possessions’ 
exhibit,  then  visit  the  Forestry,  Fish  and  Game  building 
which  covers  four  or  five  acres.  The  great  Palace  of 
Agriculture,  the  largest  building  on  the  grounds,  covers 
twenty  acres;  cost  $800,000,  will  stand  on  a  hill  amid  a 
mass  of  flowers.  Immediately  south  of  the  Palace  of 
Agriculture  you  will  see  one  of  the  prettiest  sights  on 
earth,  the  Horticulture  building.  It  covers  seven  or 
eight  acres  and  cost  $200,000.  Put  in  the  remainder  of 
the  day  around  the  Live  Stock  Pens,  then  take  a  good 
snooze  and  be  ready  for  the  third  day  of  sight-seeing. 

On  the  third  day  go  to  see  Japan’s  pavilions,  the 
Illinois  and  California  State  buildings,  the  Temple  of 
Fraternity,  Jerusalem,  Festival  Hall,  and  the  Cascades, 
Terrace  of  States  and  the  magnificent  Palace  of  Fine  Arts 
on  the  Art  Hill.  See  here  in  a  building  that  cjst  more 

than  one  million  dollars  the  work  of  the  masters.  Next 

« 

go  to  see  Gen.  Grant’s  cabin,  Germany’s  Castle,  Stirling 
Castle,  and  Burns’  Cottage.  Read  the  “  Cotter’s 
Saturday  Night”  once  more.  It  is  the  best  poem  in  the 
English  language.  Now  you  may  run  over  the  Plateau 
of  States  hurriedly,  look  at  the  birds  in  their  large  cage, 
then  sleep  again. 

If  you  wish  to  see  the  great  shows  on  the  “  Pike  ” 
you  must  put  in  several  days  there  before  you  go  home. 
You  must  stay  a  week,  you  ought  to  stay  a  month,  and, 
if  you  can  afford  it,  stay  six  months  and  make  a  study  of 
the  whole  show. 

No  ten  universities  on  earth  can  give  you  the  same 
amount  of  information  in  so  short  a  time. 

Do  you  want  to  study  sculpture,  painting,  machinery, 
electricity,  educational  methods,  architecture,  agricul¬ 
ture,  horticulture,  languages,  mythology,  engineering, 
floriculture,  railroading,  navigation,  manufacturing, 
stock  raising,  forestry,  pisiculture,  anthropology,  the 
different  races  of  men,  their  religions,  governments, 
manners  and  customs? 


27 


Come  to  the  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition,  May  1st  to 
December  1st,  1904.  The  greatest  event,  perhaps,  in  our 
nation’s  history  will  be  most  splendidly  celebrated.  Vir¬ 
ginia  will  reproduce  Monticello,  the  home  of  Jefferson, 
and  will  no  doubt  keep  it  filled  with  Virginia’s  great  men, 
dead  and  yet  alive ,  “  C  ?  ”  Jerusalem  will  be  a  reproduc¬ 
tion  of  the  city  of  Jerusalem.  England  will  reproduce  the 
Orangery  of  Kensington  Castle,  Queen  Anne’s  flower 
garden.  France  will  reproduce  the  Graud  Trianon,  the 
French  Government  building  at  Versailles.  Louisiana 
will  show  us  the  old  Cabildo,  and  Mississippi,  the  home 
of  Jefferson  Davis  —  Beauvoir.  Japan  and  Germany  will 
reproduce  royal  castles.  And  what  will  Missouri  do,  you 
ask?  Why,  she  will  “  show  ”  the  rest  of  the  world  what 
a  great  empire  she  is.  You  will  see  a  streak  of  Missouri 
running  through  the  Fair  from  start  to  finish. 

A  good  guide  will  be  indispensable  to  those  who  have 
but  a  few  days  in  which  to  see  the  World’s  Greatest 
Fair. 


RELIGION. 

i(  Way  back  on  the  horizon  of  Celestial  history,  stands 
that  quaint  old  philosopher,  Confucius;  a  character 
revered  by  four  hundred  millions  of  people  and  honored 
by  every  one  who  knows  anything  about  the  venerable 
saint.  Said  Confucius :  “  Do  not  do  anything  to  another 
that  you  do  not  wish  to  be  done  to  you.” 

On  the  hills  of  Palestine  two  thousand  years  ago,  a 
man  teaching  his  disciples  said:  “Do  unto  others  as 
you  would  have  others  do  unto  you.” 

The  tombs  of  Egypt  have  given  up  the  gospel  of  Osiris, 
the  Book  of  the  Dead.  Lying  in  these  Egyptian  tombs 
for  two  thousand  five  hundred  years,  is  found  substan¬ 
tially  the  same  doctrine,  taught  by  the  priests  of  Isis 
along  the  banks  of  the  Nile. 

In  the  mountains  of  India,  so  far  back  in  historv  that 
the  mind  of  man  staggers  in  its  contemplation, 
Gautama,  that  son  of  an  Indian  prince,  that  father  of 


28 


a  religion  which  to  this  day  counts  its  devotees  by  the 
millions,  preached  the  same  principle  of  ethics. 

And  the  sacred  Yeddas,  those  holy  Aryan  songs 
chanted  by  the  ancient  peoples  who  came  from  Persia  to 
people  the  then  new  world  of  India,  before  Confucius, 
before  Gautama,  before  Isis,  before  Osiris,  before 
Jupiter,  before  Noah:  these  people  held  aloft  the  same 
torch,  this  same  doctrine,  this  same  teaching  of  the 
Brotherhood  of  Man. 

There  is  not  a  religion  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that  is 
worthy  of  respect  or  consideration  which  does  not  rec¬ 
ognize  and  teach  the  same  idea. 

Whatever  has  set  man  against  man,  whatever  has 
pushed  people  into  so-called  “holy  wars,”  whatever 
has  impelled  man  to  fly  at  his  brother’s  throat  for 
religion’s  sake,  has  not  had  its  birth  in  the  fundamentals, 
the  ethics  of  any  faith;  it  has  had  its  origin  directly  in 
the  hair-splitting  questions  of  abstract  theology  raised 
by  preacher  or  priest.  Where  is  the  man  who  can  say 
that  Jesus  would  have  indorsed  the  Crusades,  taken 
part  in  the  Inquisition,  would  have  slaughtered  the 
saints  of  St.  Bartholomew,  or  hung  the  Quakers  of 
Salem? 

For  thousands  of  years,  the  flames  of  Hate  have  been 
kept  alive  by  the  teachers  of  the  faiths  founded  by 
merciful,  peaceful  men.  The  day,  we  trust,  is  at  hand 
when  men  cease  to  delegate  to  preachers  a  power  of 
attorney  to  do  their  thinking.  The  hour  is  at  hand  when 
the  human  mind  considers  for  himself  these  problems  of 
existence,  these  questions  of  man’s  relation  to  man.  So 
far  as  questions  of  the  future  life  are  concerned,  these 
matters  may  well  occupy  the  time  of  professional 
preachers  of  Faith.  They  know  nothing  about  them, 
and  we  don’t  either. 

Most  of  us  are,  nominally  at  least,  of  the  Christian 
faith.  Let  us  quote  the  following  words  from  Ecclesi¬ 
astes,  words  written  by  Solomon,  who  has  the  reputation 
of  being  the  wisest  man  that  ever  lived  :  “  For  that  which 
oefalleth  the  sons  of  men  befalleth  beasts:  even  one 
thing  befalleth  them:  as  the  one  dieth,  so  dieth  the 


29 


other;  yea,  they  have  all  one  breath:  so  that  a  man  have 
no  pre-eminence  above  a  beast,  for  all  is  vanity.  All  go 
to  one  place:  are  all  dust,  and  all  turn  to  dust  again. 
Who  knoweth  the  spirit  of  man  that  goeth  upward,  and 
the  spirit  of  the  beast  that  goeth  downward  to  the  earth? 
Wherefore,  I  perceive  that  there  is  nothing  better  than 
that  a  man  should  rejoice  in  his  own  works:  for  who 
shall  bring  him  to  see  what  shall  be  after  him?” 

If  our  Scriptures  are  inspired  these  words  are  as  much 
inspired  as  any  other  portion.  If  Solomon  knew  what 
he  was  talking  about,  if  the  wisest  man  of  history,  who 
was  inspired  to  boot,  was  compelled  to  declare  that  he 
knew  nothing  of  the  beyond,  how  are  we  to  know  who 
are  not  particularly  wise  and  who  are  not  inspired? 

But  Solomon  knows  of  a  rule  of  conduct  best  tofollow; 
that  a  man  should  so  live  as  to  be  able  to  i(  rejoice  in  his 
own  works,”  the  teaching  of  sages  of  all  the  ages. 

We  now  come  to  the  application  and  its  results. 
Does  it  not  fill  the  heart  of  a  man  with  gladness  who 
has  been  able  to  snatch  a  drowning  man  from  the  river? 
There  is  but  one  happier  man  than  the  rescued  one,  and 
that  is  the  rescuer.  Only  the  soldier  who  has  had  the 
opportunity  to  save  the  life  of  a  fellow  can  realize  the 
pleasure  to  be  derived  from  the  deed.  Let  a  man  have 
a  chance  to  save  a  helpless  woman  from  a  drunken 
bully  who  is  beating  her  to  death,  and  he  will  properly 
brag  about  it  all  the  rest  of  his  life.  The  man  who 
saves  another  from  bankruptcy  is  a  cold-blooded  wretch 
if  he  does  not  reap  a  harvest  of  joy  from  the  deed. 

Who  has  resuscitated  a  half  frozen  man  and  dragged 
him  to  a  cabin  in  the  mountain  to  thaw  out,  but  has  ex¬ 
perienced  a  season  of  pride  and  joy  which  has  lasted 
him  to  the  end  of  his  life? 

In  this  very  thing  lies  the  true  philosophy  of  life. 
Doing  good  to  one’s  fellowrs  without  hope  of  remuner¬ 
ation  is  the  highest  possible  ideal  of  human  conduct. 
This  idea  of  dealing  out  beneficent  works  through  hope 
of  heaven  or  fear  of  hell,  is  not  attractive  to  one  whose 
heart  throbs  with  human  sympathy.  It  is  a  low  order 
of  creature  who  has  to  be  bribed  with  reward  of  eternal 


% 


30 


life,  or  threatened  with  prospect  of  damnation  in  order 
to  induce  him  to  be  decent. 

Let  us  get  back  to  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  of  Confucius 
and  every  great  teacher  of  the  world’s  history  worth 
listening  to,  that  each  of  us  is  responsible  for  our 
brother’s  welfare,  that  each  of  us  is  our  brother’s 
keeper;  that  what  does  him  good  does  us  good,  that  an 
injury  to  one  is  the  concern  of  all. 

In  that  teaching  lies  the  essence  of  all  systems  of 
ethics  ever  devised.  That  teaching  is  the  very  summit 
of  human  conduct  of  which  the  mind  of  man  can  con¬ 
ceive.  There  is  no  higher  plane  of  life;  there  is  nothing 
that  will  bring  you  greater  satisfaction.  Follow  this 
idea  and  you  will  be  saved;  saved  from  the  scorn  of  your 
own  soul.  Follow7  it  and  every  pulsation  of  your  heart 
will  beat  its  warm  approval.  No  matter  to  what  court 
you  are  called  after  your  life  is  ended,  you  can  challenge 
an  examination  of  the  record.  There  is  no  God  in  the 
skies  who  will  deal  harshly  with  such  a  soul.” — Edito¬ 
rial  in  Manila  Freedom. 

Dr.  Andrew  D.  White  in  his  u  History  of  the  Warfare 
of  Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,”  has  shown 
that,  from  the  Assyrian  researches  as  well  as  from  other 
sources,  it  has  come  to  be  acknowledged  by  the  most 
eminent  scholars  at  the  leading  seats  of  Christian  learn¬ 
ing  that  the  accounts  of  creation  with  which  for  nearly 
two  thousand  years  all  scientific  discoveries  have  had  to 
be  (l  reconciled  ”  —  the  accouuts  which  blocked  the  way 
of  Copernicus,  Galileo,  Newton  and  LaPlace  —  were 
simply  transcribed  or  evolved  from  a  mass  of  myths  and 
legends  largely  derived  by  the  Hebrews  from  their  an¬ 
cient  relations  with  Chaldea,  rewrought  in  a  monothe¬ 
istic  sense,  imperfectly  welded  together,  and  then  thrown 
into  poetic  form  in  the  sacred  books  which  we  have  in¬ 
herited.  As  to  creation  and  evolution,  Darwin’s  theory 
of  natural  selection  is  now  adopted  by  leading  universi¬ 
ties,  and  conceded  in  sermons  of  high  ecclesiastics  in  En¬ 
gland,  and  in  Professor  Drummond’s  Chautauqua  lectures 
in  1893. 

“  Dr.  A.  P.  Peabody  once  said  that  Tyndall’s  deistical 


31 


work,  ‘  The  Gospel  a  Republication  of  the  Law7  of 
Nature,’  admits  in  its  title  the  strongest  ground  —  nay, 
the  only  ground  —  on  which  we  can  believe  or  defend 
Christianity.  To  suppose  it  a  divine  afterthought  —  a 
supplementary  creation,  ao  excrescence  upon  nature  —  is 
to  dishonor  it  under  shelter  of  a  pretended  advocacy. 
Nay,  more,  it  is  to  impugn  the  divine  immutableness, 
the  integrity  of  those  attributes  that  underlie  all  relig¬ 
ion.  The  highest  view  of  Christianity  is  that  which 
regards  it  as  the  religion  of  nature,  as  the  constitu¬ 
tional  law  of  the  spiritual  universe,  as  corresponding  to 
the  mathematical  laws  wrhich  are  embodied  in  the  ma¬ 
terial  universe,  —  absolute,  m  cessary,  eternal  truth,  that 
which  always  was  and  ever  will  be.  Revelation  did  not 
create  it  any  more  than  Newton  created  the  law  of  gravi¬ 
tation,  or  Kepler  the  law  of  planetary  motion.” 

“  One’s  individual  religion  may  be  too  sacred  to  be 
Pharisaically  flaunted,  yet  on  the  evolutionist’s  banner 
may  still  be  inscribed:  The  Fatherhood  of  Gcd,  the 
Brotherhood  of  Man,  the  Leadership  of  Jesus,  Salvation 
by  Character,  and  the  Progress  of  mankind  onward  and 
upward.”  —  Benj.  F.  Burnham. 

“The  medieval  notion  that  man  has  mind,  and  animals 
only  instincts,  that  every  animal  has  certain  inborn 
instincts,  is  now  exploded.  Instincts  are  only  a  develop¬ 
ment  of  mind  by  selection  and  heredity,  as  Darwin 
showed.  Comparative  psychology  has  proved  during  the 
last  forty  years  that  animals  have  minds  just  as  well  as 
men.  The  difference  between  the  minds  of  Goethe  and 
Darwin  and  an  Australian  or  a  Patagonian  is  far  greater 
than  that  between  these  savages  and  the  higher  species 
of  apes.  Behind  the  greatest  minds  lies  all  the  long  line 
of  evolution  out  of  the  perceptions  of  the  simplest  cells, 
and  it  is  especially  important  to  remember  that  the 
lawTs  of  adaptation  to  environment  and  heredity  have  had 
all  to  do  with  this  great  evolution. 

All  sorts  of  misty  ideas  prevail  on  the  subject  of 
immortality  of  the  individual  soul.  Some  speak  of  it 
as  being  a  sort  of  ethereal  being,  some  as  if  it  were  made 
of  thin  matter;  some  merely  hold  that  in  some  unknown 


32 


Way  it  continues  to  exist.  If  the  old  theory  of  man 
having  a  soul  separate  and  distinct  from  his  body  is  true, 
then  many  animals  also  have  immortal  souls. 

And  then  these  theorists  have  trouble  in  stating  exactly 
where  the  soul  came  from;  was  it  in  heaven,  and  when 
was  it  put  into  the  child?  After  a  study  of  all  these 
fantastic  theories  science  is  unsatisfied  with  any,  and  is 
forced  to  state  its  conclusions.  The  belief  in  the 
immortality  of  the  human  soul  is  a  dogma  in  utter  con¬ 
tradiction  to  the  facts  which  investigation  has  proven 
to  be  true. 

The  only  immortality  for  man  is  that  of  the  transmission 
of  his  character  to  later  generations  through  his 
children,  or  the  influence  which  he  exerts  on  the  world  of 
thought  while  alive.  If,  as  science  proves,  mind,  soul, 
consciousness,  are  only  properties  of  soulplasm,  the 
cell  itself,  when  that  cell  dies  thought  must  cease, 
save  as  it  has  passed  its  thought  on  to  others  ”  —  Dr. 
Ernst  Haeckel. 

After  sixteen  years  of  earnest  study  and  travel  includ¬ 
ing  a  circuit  of  the  globe  via  Japan,  Philippine  Islands, 
Australasia,  Africa  and  Europe,  my  conclusion  concerning 
the  Bible  is  this:  It  is  a  big  book  of  tales  interwoven  with 
many  noble  truths. 

f  Jefferson,  Randolph  and  other  great  Americans  be¬ 
lieved  in  one  great  God.  The  Indians  of  America  believed 
in  one  Great  Spirit. 

Of  all  the  “  Sheeny  ”  games  that  have  been  worked  on 
the  world  the  game  of  religion  is  the  biggest. 

Why  can’t  we  decide  on  one  God  and  quit  wrangling 
over  religious  matters  forever? 

We  need  no  preachers  but  good  teachers,  such  as  Plato, 
Solomon,  Bacon,  Copernicus,  Galileo,  Newton  and  Dar¬ 
win,  are,  and  will  always  be,  a  great  necessity. 

What  if  all  the  money  and  time  that  has  been  wasted 
on  religious  matters  had  been  spent  in  teaching  nature’s 
laws  to  men?  We,  like  the  waters  of  the  earth,  the  leaves 
of  the  trees,  the  flowers  of  the  fields,  travel  the  rounds  of 
natural  laws. 

There  was  no  heretofore  for  me,  I  have  no  conscious- 


33 


ness  of  a  pre-existence,  therefore  I  believe  there  will  be 
no  future  existence  for  me  except  in  material  form. 

The  great  Gcd  before  whom  I  reverently  bow  is,  I  be¬ 
lieve,  infinite  in  His  character.  I  am  finite.  How  can 
the  finite  fathom  the  infinite? 

If  we  speculate  on  the  future  state  of  man  we  ought  to 
do  it  in  a  good-natured  way,  for  none  of  us  can  speak 
authoritatively. 

Let  us  be  moral  and  do  good  works. 

Some  Hawthorne  is  needed  to  take  up  the  Bible  and 
write  a  Wonder-Book  from  its  tales  for  the  children. 

Read  (t  The  Cotter’s  Saturday  Night  ”  every  Sabbath. 
It  might  very  well  supplant  two-thirds  of  the  Bible. 

Epitomize  and  simplify  the  Bible  so  that  children  may 
understand  it  when  they  read  it  or  hear  it  read.  An 
honest  confession  on  the  part  of  preachers  and  priests  is 
what  the  Christian  world  needs.  Why  can’t  honest  Jews, 
honest  Catholics,  and  honest  Protestants  get  together  and 
agree  to  tell  the  truth?  Let  them  unfurl  the  banner  of 
the  Great  Spirit,  of  the  Great  Unknown,  all  of  us  can 
agree  on  that,  and  be  happy,  good,  and  peaceful. 

The  frail  insects  of  a  moment;  “we  are  such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  of.” 

Helen  Gould,  bless  her,,  how  can  an  ex-soldier  turn 
down  her  religion?  She  lives  it.  I  hope  she  will  never 
think  that  we  would,  if  we  could,  destroy  the  good  les¬ 
sons  taught  by  the  Babe  of  Bethlehem. 

To  me  the  world  is  ringing  with  music  and  all  is 
tending  toward  perfection.  The  animal  that  picked  up  a 
stick  or  rock  and  began  to  use  it  on  other  animals  has 
ever  been  the  ruling  animal.  All  other  animals  are 
scared  of  him. 

The  animal  that  invents  and  uses  the  most  ingenious 
tool  —  machine  gun  —  whether  it  be  white,  yellow,  or 
black,  will  in  the  ages  to  come  exterminate  or  subdue  all 
others.  The  time  will  come  when  there  will  be  but  one 
religion,  one  language,  and  one  race  of  men  on  earth. 

Way  back,  millions  of  years  ago,  when  the  crust  of  the 
earth  was  forming,  there  was  perhaps  but  one  little,  uni¬ 
cellular  animal,  and  out  of  this  little  animal,  through  the 

s 


34  , 


long  ages,  has  come  a  sunburst  of  life  that  has  assumed 
many  forms,  colors  aud  sizes.  Insects,  birds  —  the 
angels  of  earth  —  reptiles,  mammalia,  man  included,  have 
come  out  of  this  sunburst  —  this  evolution  of  animal  life. 
“  Growth  and  decay  are  natural.”  Life  and  death  are 
natural. 

Plato  and  other  great  minds  of  ancient  times  had  dim 
notions  of  evolution,  but  it  was  left  for  Charles  Darwin 
to  point  out  the  ways  of  evolution  clearly  .to  men. 

Darwin  was  greater  than  Moses,  and  Haeckel  is  Dar¬ 
win’s  Joshua. 

A  religion  more  deeply  rooted  in  science  and  right 
conduct  is  the  need  of  the  hour.  We  don’t  know  it  all; 
“  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth  than  we 
have  ever  dreamed  of,”  but  we  do  know  more  than  the 
Jews  knew  in  the  olden  days.  The  men  who  wrote  the 
Bible  were  inspired  in  the  same  sense  that  Copernicus, 
Newton  and  Darwin  were  inspired.  Did  Christ  ever  say : 
I  am  the  Son  of  God?  No.  He  was  the  greatest  and 
best  of  all  Jews,  nothing  more. 

Did  the  Bible  tell  us  about  geology,  electricity,  circu¬ 
lation  of  the  blood,  the  law  of  gravitation,  anesthetics, 
or  this  goodly  land  we  live  upon  —  America?  What  did 
Moses,  or  Solomon,  or  Jesus.  Christ  tell  us  concerning 
the  shape  of  the  earth  or  the  solar  system?  They  simply 
did  not  know  of  these  things  any  more  than  George 
Washington  knew  of  telegraphy,  phononographs  and 
automobiles. 

The  Jewish  Bible  is  nothing  to  me  but  a  bit  of  history, 
a  mere  incident  in  the  development  of  the  human  race. 
English  and  American  historians  are  more  trustworthy 
than  the  authors  of  the  Bible. 

We  can  believe  in  Moses  some,  in  Christ  more,  in 
Darwin  most,  yet  I  believe  that  other  “  inspired  ”  men 
will  come  and  teach  this  race  of  men  things  that 
Moses,  Christ,  and  Darwin  never  dreamed  of. 

“  The  wise  alone  are  flexible  in  mind.”  Let  us  be 
open  to  receive  the  nuggets  of  truth  as  they  come. 
The  truth  won’t  hurt  us,  though  it  will  knock  out  some 
of  the  false  props  on  which  we  stand  to-day. 


35 


What  the  future  will  disclose  we  do  not  know. 

All  men  should  strive  to  live  in  harmony  with  nature’s 
laws  and  to  improve  their  race  mentally,  morally  and 
physically.  Thus  may  a  heaven  be  made  on  earth  for 
our  posterity. 

The  God  that  I  adore  is  a  more  majestic  potentate  than 
the  God  of  the  Jews. 

To  discard  the  fabulous  in  Judaism  aud  accept  the 
truths,  laid  bare  by  modern  scientists  as  they  dig  them 
out  of  nature’s  great  book,  does  not  call  for  a  wild 
revolution  and  bloodshed. 

It  simply  says,  “  Ring  out  the  false,  ring  in  the  true.” 

There  are  many  nuggets  of  wisdom  in  the  Bible, 
e  ■  §  ■  • 

“Whoso  loveth  understanding  loveth  his  own  soul.” 
Cl  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother.”  “ Blessed  are  the 
pure  in  heart.”  “  After  a  proud  and  boasting  spirit  comes 
a  fall.”  “It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive.” 
“  Be  thoughtful.”  “  Be  good  to  the  poor,  the  widow 
and  the  orphan.” 

One  of  the  truest  things- in  the  Bible  reads We  are 
of  the  earth  and  we  are  earthy.” 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  spirit  or  ghost,  else  my 
good  mother  would  come  and  tell  her  boy  something  of 
the  beyond. 

Why  can’t  all  Christians  unite?  There  should  be 
unity  in  church  work,  if  for  no  other  reason  for  the 
sake  of  economy.  No  Catholics,  no  Protestants.  All 
one.  There  is  oneness  in  the  whole  of  God’s  creation. 
Why  are  laborers  uniting?  Why  are  capitalists  uniting? 

Is  it  not  more  important  that  the  followers  of  Christ 
unite? 

I  would  not  destroy  the  good  that  is  in  our  religion  (I 
say  our  religion  because  I  am  nominally  a  Christian), 
but  I  would  supplant  the  myths  with  facts,  the  Garden 
of  Eden  story  with  the  cosmic  lessons  of  the  earth,  I 
would  extend  the  taproot  of  our  religion,  whether  we 
be  Jew  or  Gentile,  Moslem  or  Christian,  downward  and 
upward  to  truths.  The  good  that  Jesus,  who  iocis  called 
the  Son  of  God,  showed  by  example,  should  be  kept  by 


36 


all  of  us.  We,  too,  are  the  sons  of  God,  every  one  of  us. 
When  Judaism  fell  short  Christianity  came  as  an  appendix. 

Another  appendix  is  needed;  Darwin  has  supplied  it. 

Moses  is  a  dim  star  twinkling  in  the  distance;  Darwin 
is  a  luminous  sun  shining  all  about  us. 

Moses  scratched  on  the  surface;  Darwin  dug  into  the 
earth’s  mysteries  and  brought  to  our  sight  the  true  origin 
of  man. 

‘‘Every  mark  on  man  shows  unmistakable  signs  of  his 
lowly  origin.” 

Did  man  ever  utter  a  nobler  sentiment  than  Thomas 
Pain  when  he  said :  — 

“The  world  is  my  country,  to  do  good  is  my  relig¬ 
ion?”  Jefferson  was  called,  “Infidel”  and  elected 
President.  Could  an  infidel  be  elected  President  at  this 
time  ? 

Is  it  possible  that,  at  the  age  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
seven  years,  this  Republic  has  less  of  religious  freedom 
than  it  had  when  it  was  twenty*  one  years  old  ? 

It  is  true,  I  fear.  Aud  yet  I  remember  that  this  Re¬ 
public  was  founded  by  lovers  of  religious  freedom,  and 
made  a  refuge  for  those  who  were  oppressed  by  religious 
tyranny  in  Europe. 

I  am  weary  of  religious  wranglings.  I’ll  join  the  in¬ 
visible  church,  and  serve  my  maker  to  the  best  of  my 
ability  by  serving  my  fellow-creatures. 

I  would  be  a  Ben  Abou,  and  love  my  fellow-man. 

We  will  all  grow  in  knowledge,  and  especially  in 
knowledge  of  religions,  as  the  years  roll  by.  “  Servus 
Servorum  Sum.”  Light  is  welcomed  into  my  windows. 


THE  RACE  PROBLEM* 


LINCOLN  AND  THE 
EMANCIPATION  PROCLAMATION 

By  IDA  M.  TARBELL, 


Author  of  4i  The  Early  Life  of  Lincoln,” 


Copyright  1899  by  the  S.  S*  McClure  Company  and  here 
presented  through  the  courtesy  of  McClure's  Magazine* 


Story  of  the  Progress  of  the  Idea  of  Emancipation 
in  Lincoln's  Mind,  Told  in  Hitherto  Unpub¬ 
lished  Reminiscences  by  Charles  Sumner, 

Carl  Schurz,  and  other  Close 
Friends  of  Lincoln* 

“  The  first  year  of  Abraham  Lincoln’s  Presidential 
career  closed  on  March  4,  1862.  Practically  all  of  this 
period  he  had  spent  in  an  effort  to  crush  insurrection  in 
the  Southern  States.  There  were  many  people  who  felt 
that  he  was  farther  now  from  this  end  than  he  had  ever 
been  before,  and  he  himself  realized  that  he  had  under¬ 
taken  a  task  so  gigantic  that  with  the  one  weapon  he 
had  employed  so  far,  the  army,  he  could  finish  it  only 
after  years  of  struggle. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  another  weapon  against  the  South, — 
the  emancipation  of  the  slaves.  He  did  not  want  to  use 
it.  Throughout  his  political  life  he  had  disclaimed  any 
desire  to  meddle  with  slavery  in  the  States  where  the 
Constitution  recognized  it.  He  had  undertaken  the  war 
not  to  free  men,  but  to  preserve  the  Union.  For  many 
months,  however,  he  had  been  coming  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  must  do  something  with  his  weapon,  and  he  had 
been  examining  it  much  as  a  man  in  a  desperate  situa¬ 
tion  might  a  dagger  which  he  did  not  want  to  unsheath, 
but  feared  he  might  be  forced  to.  He  was  seeking  a 
way  to  use  it,  if  the  time  came  when  he  must,  that 
would  accomplish  all  the  ends  he  had  in  view  and  still 
would  not  drive  the  border  States  from  the  Union. 
The  plan  upon  which  he  finally  settled  was  a  simple 
just,  and  impractical  one  —  he  would  ask  Congress  to 
set  aside  money  gradually  to  buy  and  free  the  negroes 
in  those  States  that  could  be  persuaded  to  give  up  the 
institution  of  slavery.  Having  freed  the  slaves,  he  pro¬ 
posed  that  Congress  should  colonize  them  in  territory 
bought  for  the  purpose. 


(39) 


40 


According  to  Charles  Sumner,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  this 
plan  of  compensated  emancipation  well  developed  by  De¬ 
cember  1,  1861.  The  Senator  reached  Washington  onthat 
day,  and  went  in  the  evening  to  call  on  the  President. 
Together  they  talked  over  the  annual  message,  which 
was  to  be  sent  to  Congress  on  the  3d.  Mr.  Sumner  was 
disappointed  that  it  said  nothing  about  emancipation. 

He  had  been  speaking  in  Massachusetts  on  “  Emanci¬ 
pation  as  our  Best  Weapon,”  and  he  ardently  desired 
that  the  President  use  the  weapon.  The  President  ex¬ 
plained  the  plan  he  had  developed,  and  Mr.  Sumner 
urged  that  it  be  presented  at  once.  Mr.  Lincoln  declined 
to  agree  to  thi^,  but  as  he  rose  to  say  good-bye  to  his 
visitor,  he  remarked:  “Well,  Mr.  Sumner,  the  only 
difference  between  you  and  me  on  the  subject  is  a  differ¬ 
ence  of  a  month  or  six  weeks  in  time.” 

“Mr.  President,”  said  Mr.  Sumner,  “if  that  is  the 
only  difference  between  us,  I  will  not  say  another  word 
to  you  about  it  till  the  long  set  time  you  name  has 
passed  by.” 

“Nor  should  I  have  done  so,”  continues  Sumner  in 
telling  the  story,  “  but  about  a  fortnight  after,  when  I 
was  with  him,  he  introduced  the  subject  himself,  asked 
my  opinion  on  some  details  of  his  plan,  and  told  me 
where  it  labored  his  mind.  At  that  time  he  had  the  hope 
that  some  of  the  border  States,  Delaware,  perhaps,  if 
nothing  better  could  be  got,  might  be  brought  to  make 
a  proposition  which  could  be  made  use  of  as  the  initia¬ 
tion  to  hitch  the  whole  thing  to.” 

Sumner  could  not  keep  still  after  this  about  the  plan. 
Almost  every  time  he  saw  Lincoln  he  put  in  a  word. 
Thus,  when  the  “  Trent  ”  affair  was  up,  he  took  occasion 
to  read  the  President  a  little  lecture.  “Now,  Mr.  Pres¬ 
ident,”  he  said:  “if  you  had  done  your  duty  earlier  in 
the  slavery  matter,  you  would  not  have  this  trouble  on 
you.  Now  you  have  no  friends,  or  the  country  has  none, 
because  it  has  no  policy  on  slavery.  The  country  has  no 
friends  in  Europe,  excepting  isolated  persons.  England 
Is  not  a  friend,  France  is  not.  But  if  you  had  commenced 
your  policy  about  slavery,  this  thing  could  and  would 


41 


have  come  and  gone  and  would  have  given  you  no 
anxiety. 

“  Every  time  I  saw  him  I  spoke  to  him  about  it,  and 
I  saw  him  every  two  or  three  days.  At  one  time  I 
thought  he  would  send  in  the  message  on  New  Year’s 
day;  and  I  said  something  about  what  a  glorious  day  it 
would  be. 

uBut  he  stopped  me  in  a  moment.  ‘[Don’t  say  a  word 
about  that,’  he  said;  CI  know  very  well  that  the  name 
which  is  connected  with  this  act  will  never  be  forgotten.’ 
Well,  there  was  one  delay  and  another,  but  I  always 
spoke  to  him,  till  one  day  in  January  he  said  sadly  that 
he  had  been  up  all  night  with  his  sick  child.  I  was  very 
much  touched,  and  I  resolved  that  I  would  say  nothing  to 
the  President  about  this  or  any  other  business  if  I  could 
help  it  till  that  child  was  well  or  dead.  And  I  did 
not.  *  *  *  I  had  never  said  a  word  to  him  again 
about  it  —  one  morning  here  before  I  had  breakfast, 
before  I  was  up,  indeed,  both  his  secretaries  came  over 
to  say  that  he  wanted  to  see  me  as  soon  as  I  could  see 
him.  I  dressed  at  once  and  went  over.  ‘  I  want  to  read 
you  my  message,’  he  said  :  c  I  want  to  know  how  you  like 
it.  I  am  going  to  send  it  in  to-day.’  ” 

It  was  on  the  morning  of  March  6,  1862,  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  sent  for  Mr.  Sumner  to  read  his  message.  A 
few  hours  later,  when  the  Senator  reached  the  Capitol, 
he  went  to  the  Senate  desk  to  see  if  the  President  had 
carried  out  his  intention.  Yes,  the  document  was  there. 

As  Mr.  Sumner’s  history  of  the  message  given  to  Dr. 
Hale  shows,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  been  quietly  preparing  the 
way  for  his  plan.  One  of  his  most  adroit  preparatory 
maneuvers,  and  one  of  which  Mr.  Sumner  evidently 
knew  nothing,  was  performed  in  New  York  City,  through 
the  Hon.  Carl  Schurz,  who  at  that  time  was  the  American 
minister  to  Spain. 

Mr.  Schurz,  who  had  gone  to  Madrid  in  1861,  had  not 
been  long  there  before  he  concluded  that  there  would  be 
great  danger  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  .being  recog¬ 
nized  by  France  and  England  unless  the  aspect  of  the 
situation  was  speedily  changed,  either  by  a  decisive 


42 


military  success,  or  by  some  evidence  on  the  part  of  the 
Administration  that  the  war  was  to  end  in  the  destruc¬ 
tion  of  slavery.  If  the  conflict  were  put  on  this  high 
moral  plane,  Mr.  Schurz  believed  the  sympathy  of  the 
people  in  Europe  would  be  so  strong  with  the  North  that 
interference  in  favor  of  the  South  would  be  impossible. 
All  of  this  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Seward  in  September  of  1861, 
but  he  received  no  reply  to  his  letter  other  than  a  formal 
acknowledgment. 

After  a  little  time,  Mr.  Schurz  wrote  to  Mr.  Lincoln 
saying  that  he  wanted  to  come  to  Washington  and  per¬ 
sonally  represent  to  the  Administration  what  he  con¬ 
ceived  to  be  the  true  nature  of  public  opinion  in  Europe. 
Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  to  him  to  come,  and  he  arrived  in 
Washington  in  the  last  week  of  January,  1862.  He  went 
at  once  to  the  White  House,  where  he  was  received  by  the 
President,  who  listened  attentively  to  his  arguments,  the 
same  he  had  made  by  letter  to  Mr.  Seward.  When  he 
had  finished  his  presentation  of  the  case,  Mr.  Lincoln 
said  that  he  was  inclined  to  accept  that  view,  but  that  he 
was  not  sure  that  the  public  sentiment  of  the  country 
was  ripe  for  such  a  policy.  It  had  to  be  educated  up  to 
it.  Would  not  Mr.  Schurz  go  to  New  York  and  talk  the 
matter  over  with  their  friends,  some  of  whom  Mr.  Lincoln 
named? 

Mr.  Schurz  assented,  and  a  few  days  afterwards  re¬ 
ported  to  Mr.  Lincoln  that  the  organization  of  an 
“Emancipation  Society,’’  for  the  purpose  of  agitating 
the  idea,  had  been  started  in  New  York,  and  that  a 
public  meeting  would  be  held  at  the  Cooper  Union,  on 
March  6th, 

“  That’s  it;  that  is  the  very  thing,”  Mr.  Lincoln  replied. 
“You  must  make  a  speech  at  this  meeting.  Go  home 
and  prepare  it.  When  you  have  got  it  outlined  bring  it 
to  me,  and  I  will  see  what  you  are  going  to  say.” 

Mr.  Schurz  did  so,  and  in  a  few  days  submitted  to  Mr. 
Lincoln  the  skeleton  of  his  argument  on  “Emancipation 
as  a  Peace  Measure.” 

“  That  is  the  right  thing  to  say,”  the  President  declared 


43 


after  reading  it,  “  and,  remember,  you  may  hear  from  me 
on  the  same  day.” 

On  March  6th  the  speech  was  delivered,  as  had  been 
arranged,  before  an  audience  which  packed  Cooper 
Union.  No  more  logical  and  eloquent  appeal  for  eman¬ 
cipation  was  made  in  all  the  period.  The  audience  re¬ 
ceived  it  with  repeated  cheers,  and  when  Mr.  Schurz  sat 
down  “the  applause  shook  the  hall,”  if  we  may  believe 
the  reporter  of  the  New  York  “Tribune.”  Just  as  the 
meeting  was  adjourning,  Mr.  Schurz  did  hear  from  Mr. 
Lincoln,  a  copy  of  the  message  given  that  afternoon  to 
Congress  being  placed  in  his  hands.  He  at  once  read  it 
to  the  audience,  which,  already  thoroughly  aroused, 
now  broke  out  again  in  a  “tremendous  burst  of  ap¬ 
plause.” 

The  first  effect  of  the  message  was  to  unite  the  radi¬ 
cal  supporters  of  Mr.  Lincoln  with  the  more  moderate. 
“  We  are  all  brought  by  the  common-sense  message,” 
said  “Harper’s  Weekly,”  “upon  the  same  platform. 
The  cannon  shot  against  Fort  Sumter  effaced  three- 
fourths  of  our  political  lines;  the  President’s  message 
has  wiped  out  the  remaining  fourth.”  But  to  Mr.  Lin¬ 
coln’s  keen  disappointment,  the  border  State  repre¬ 
sentatives  in  Congress  let  the  proposition  pass  in  silence. 
Although  the  message  failed  to  arouse  the  border  States, 
it  did  stimulate  the  anti-slavery  party  in  Congress  to 
complete  several  practical  measures.  Acts  of  Congress 
were  rapidly  approved  forbidding  the  army  and  navy  to 
aid  in  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves,  recognizing  the  inde¬ 
pendence  of  Liberia  and  Haiti,  and  completing  a  treaty 
with  Great  Britain  to  suppress  slave  trading.  One  of  the 
most  interesting  of  the  acts  which  followed  close  on  the 
message  of  March  6th  emancipated  immediately  all  the 
slaves  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  One  million  dollars 
was  appropriated  by  Congress  to  pay  loyal  slaveholders 
of  the  District  for  their  loss,  and  $100,000  was  set  aside 
to  pay  the  expenses  of  such  negroes  as  desired  to  emi¬ 
grate  to  Haiti  or  Liberia. 

The  Administration  was  now  committed  to  compensated 
emancipation;  but  there  were  many  radicals  who  grew 


44 


restive  at  the  slow  working  of  the  measure.  They  began 
again  to  call  for  a  more  trenchant  use  of  the  weapon  in 
Lincoln’s  hand.  The  commander  of  the  Department  of 
the  South,  Gen.  David  Hunter,  in  his  zeal,  even  issued 
au  order  declaring :  (  Slavery  and  martial  law  in  a  free 
country,  are  altogether  incompatible;  the  persons  in 
*  *  *  Georgia,  Florida,  and  South  Carolina  heretofore 
held  as  slaves,  are,  therefore,  declared  forever  free.’ 

Mr.  Lincoln’s  first  knowledge  of  this  proclamation 
came  to  him  through  the  newspapers.  He  at  once  pro¬ 
nounced  it  void.  At  the  same  time  he  made  a  declara¬ 
tion  at  which  a  man  less  courageous,  one  less  confident 
in  his  own  policy,  would  have  hesitated  —  a  declaration 
of  his  intention  that  no  one  but  himself  should  decide 
how  the  weapon  in  his  hand  should  be  used. 

‘  I  further  make  known  that,  whether  it  be  competent 
for  me,  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy,  to 
declare  the  .slaves  of  any  State  or  States  free,  and 
whether,  at  any  time,  in  any  case,  it  shall  have  become  a 
necessity  indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of  the  gov¬ 
ernment  to  exercise  such  supposed  power,  are  questions 
which,  under  my  responsibility,  I  reserve  to  myself,  and 
which  I  cannot  feel  justified  in  leaving  to  the  decision  of 
commanders  in  the  field.’ 

It  was  a  public  display  of  a  trait  of  Mr.  Lincoln  of 
which  the  country  had  already  several  examples.  He 
made  his  own  decisions,  trusted  his  own  judgment  as  a 
final  authority. 

In  revoking  Hunter’s  order,  Mr.  Lincoln  again  ap¬ 
pealed  to  the  border  States  to  accept  his  plan  of  buying 
and  freeing  their  slaves,  and  as  if  to  warn  them  that  the 
unauthorized  step  which  Hunter  had  dared  to  take  might 
yet  be  forced  upon  the  Administration,  he  said :  “  I  do  not 
argue.  I  beseech  you  to  make  arguments  for  yourselves. 
You  cannot,  if  you  would,  be  blind  to  the  signs  of  the 
times.  I  beg  of  you  a  calm  and  enlarged  consideration 
of  them,  ranging,  if  it  may  be,  far  above  personal  and 
partisan  politics.  This  proposal  makes  common  cause 
for  a  common  object,  casting  no  reproaches  upon  any.” 

It  acts  not  the  Pharisee.  The  change  it  contemplates 


45 


would  come  gently  as  the  dews  of  heaven,  not  rending 
or  wrecking  anything.  Will  you  not  embrace  it?  So 
much  good  has  not  been  done,  by  one  effort,  in  all  past 
time,  as  in  the  providence  of  God  it  is  now  your  high 
privilege  to  do.  May  the  vast  future  not  have  to  lament 
that  you  have  neglected  it.’ 

The  President’s  treatment  of  Hunter’s  order  dissatis¬ 
fied  many  who  had  been  temporarily  quieted  by  the 
message  of  March  6th.  They  were  made  still  more  crit¬ 
ical  by  the  slow  advancement  of  McClellan  and  his  army 
toward  Richmond.  Again  they  besought  the  President 
to  emancipate  and  arm  the  slaves.  The  authority  and 
magnitude  of  the  demand  became  such  that  Mr.  Lincoln 
fairly  staggered  under  it.  Still  he  would  not  yield. 

He  could  not  give  up  yet  his  hope  of  a  more  peaceful 
and  just  system  of  emancipation.  But  while  he  could 
not  do  what  was  asked  of  him,  he  seems  to  have  felt  that 
it  was  possible  that  he  was  wrong,  and  that  another  man 
in  his  place  would  be  able  to  see  the  way.  In  a  remarka¬ 
ble  interview  held  early  in  the  summer  with  several 
Republican  senators,  among  whom  was  the  Hon.  James 
Harlan,  of  Mt.  Pleasant,  Iowa,  the  President  actually 
offered  to  resign  and  let  Mr.  Hamlin,  the  Vice-President, 
initiate  the  policy. 

The  senators  went  to  Mr.  Lincoln  to.urge  upon  him 
the  paramount  importance  of  mustering  slaves  into  the 
Union  army.  They  argued  that  as  the  war  was  really  to 
free  the  negro ,  it  was  only  fair  that  he  should  take  his 
part  in  working  out  his  own  salvation.  Mr.  Lincoln 
listened  thoughtfully  to  every  argument  and  then 
replied. — 

6  Gentlemen,  I  have  put  two  hundred  thousand  muskets 
into  the  hands  of  loyal  citizens  of  Tennessee,  Ken¬ 
tucky,  and  Western  North  Carolina.  They  have  said 
they  could  defend  themselves  if  they  had  the  guns.  I 
have  given  them  the  guns.  Now,  these  men  do  not  be¬ 
lieve  in  mustering  in  the  negro.  If  I  do  it,  these  two 
hundred  thousand  muskets  will  be  turned  against  us. 
We  should  lose  more  than  we  should  gain.’ 

The  gentlemen  urged  other  considerations,  among 


46 


them  that  it  was  not  improbable  that  Europe,  which  was 
anti-slavery  in  sentiment,  but  yet  sympathized  with  the 
notion  of  a  Southern  Confederacy,  preferring  two  nations 
to  one  in  this  country,  would  be  persuading  the  South 
to  free  her  slaves  in  consideration  of  recognition. 
After  they  had  exhausted  every  argument,  Mr.  Lincoln 
answered  them:  — 

“  Gentlemen,”  he  said,  “I  can’t  do  it.  I  can’t  see  it 
as  you  do.  You  may  be  right  and  I  may  be  wrong;  but 
I’ll  tell  you  what  I  can  do;  I  can  resign  in  favor  of  Mr. 
Hamlin.  Perhaps  Mr.  Hamlin  could  do  it.” 

The  senators,  amazed  at  this  proposition,  ‘‘which,” 
says  Senator  Harlan,  “  was  made  with  the  greatest 
seriousness,  and  of  which  not  one  of  us  doubted  the 
sincerity,”  hastened  to  assure  the  President  that  they 
could  not  consider  such  a  step  on  his  part;  that  he  stood 
where  he  could  see  all  around  the  horizon;  that  he  must 
do  what  he  thought  right;  that,  in  any  event,  he  must 
not  resign. 

As  the  spring  passed  into  summer  the  military  situation 
in  Virginia  grew  more  and  more  serious.  Finally  McClel¬ 
lan,  after  spending  April  and  May  in  working  his  way 
up  the  Peninsula  from  Fort  Monroe  to  within  a  few  miles 
of  Richmond,  and  spending  June  in  heavy  and  disas¬ 
trous  fighting,  fell  back  to  Harrison’s  Landing,  on  the 
James  River. 

“  When  the  Peninsula  campaign  terminated  suddenly 
at  Harrison’s  Landing,”  Mr.  Lincoln  said  once  to  a  friend 
who  asked  him  if  he  had  ever  despaired  of  his  country, 
“I  was  as  nearly  inconsolable  as  I  could  be  and  live.” 
McClellan’s  telegrams  from  Harrison’s  Landing  were  so 
discouraging  that  the  President  finally,  early  in  July, 
visited  the  army  there,  to  satisfy  himself  of  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  things.  He  came  away  convinced  that  he  was 
not  going  to  have  any  military  encouragement  very  soon 
to  offer  to  his  supporters.  But  he  must  show  them 
some  fruits  of  their  efforts,  some  sign  that  the  men 
and  money  that  they  had  poured  into  “  McClellan’s  trap,” 
as  it  was  beginning  to  be  called,  were  not  lost;  that  the 
new  call  for  300,000  men  just  made  was  not  to  be  in 


47 


vain.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  use  emancipa¬ 
tion  in  some  way  as  a  weapon,  and  he  summoned  the 
representatives  of  the  border  States  to  the  White  House 
on  July  12th,  and  made  an  earnest,  almost  passionate, 
appeal  to  them  to  consider  his  proposition  of  March  6th. 

It  is  doubtful  if  Mr.  Lincoln  in  all  his  political  career 
ever  had  a  measure  more  at  heart  than  his  scheme  for 
compensated  emancipation.  Isaac  Arnold,  who  knew  him 
well,  says  that  rarely,  if  ever,  was  he  known  to  manifest 
such  solicitude  as  over  this  measure. 

“Oh,  how  I  wish  the  border  States  would  accept  my 
proposition,”  he  said  to  Arnold  and  Owen  Lovejoy  one 
day;  “  then  you,  Lovejoy,  and  you,  Arnold,  and  all  of  us 
would  not  have  lived  in  vain.  The  labor  of  your  life, 
Lovejoy,  would  be  crowned  with  success.  You  would 
live  to  see  the  end  of  slavery.” 

“  Could  you  have  seen  the  President,”  wrote  Sumner 
once  to  a  friend, u  as  it  was  my  privilege  often  —  while  he 
was  considering  the  great  questions  on  which  he  has 
already  acted  — the  invitation  to  emancipation  in  the 
States,  emancipation  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  the 
acknowledgment  of  the  independence  of  Haiti  and 
Liberia,  even  your  zeal  would  have  been  satisfied.” 

i(  His  ivhole  soul  was  occupied ,  especially  by  the  first  prop¬ 
osition,  which  was  peculiarly  his  own. 

In  familiar  intercourse  with  him,  I  remember  nothing 
more  touching  than  the  earnestness  and  completeness 
with  which  he  embraced  this  idea.  To  his  mind  it  was 
just  and  beneficent,  while  it  promised  the  sure  end  of 
slavery.” 

His  address  to  the  border  State  representatives  on 
July  12th  is  full  of  this  conviction,  but  the  majority  of 
the  representatives  rejected  the  President’s  appeal. 
(Fools  they  were,  big  fools.) 

Mr.  Lincoln  never  came  to  a  point  in  his  public  career 
where  he  did  not  have  a  card  in  reserve,  and  he  never 
lacked  the  courage  to  play  it,  if  he  was  forced  to  do  it. 
“  I  must  save  this  government  if  possible,”  he  said,  now 
that  his  best  efforts  for  compensated  emancipation  were 
vain.  “What  I  cannot  do,  of  course  I  will  not  do;  but 


48 


it  may  as  well  be  understood,  once  for  all,  that  I  shall  not 
surrender  this  game,  leaving  any  available  card  un¬ 
played.”  Just  w7hat  his.“  available  card  ”  was,  he  hinted 
to  Secretary  Seward  and  Secretary  Welles  the  very  day 
after  his  interview  with  the  border  State  representatives. 
He  had  about  come  to  the  conclusion,  he  said,  that  he 
must  free  the  slaves  by  proclamation  or  be  himself  sub¬ 
dued. 

It  was  probably  very  shortly  after  this  that  a  curious 
interview  took  place  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  old  and 
intimate  friend,  Leonard  Swett,  which  shows  admirably 
the  struggle  in  the  President’s  mind.  The  story  of  this 
interview  Mr.  Swett  used  to  tell  often  to  his  friends,  and 
it  is  through  the  courtesy  of  one  of  them,  the  Hon.  Peter 
Stenger  Grosscup,  U.  S.  Circuit  Judge  for  the  Seventh 
Judicial  Circuit,  that  it  is  given  here:  — 

One  day,  during  the  course  of  the  war,  when  Mr.  Swrett 
was  at  his  home  in  Bloomington,  Illinois,  he  received  a 
telegram  asking  him  to  come  immediately  to  the  Presi¬ 
dent.  The  second  morning  afterwards  found  him  in 
Washington.  Thinking  that  something  unusual  was  at 
hand,  he  went  to  the  White  House  upon  arrival,  and  be¬ 
fore  eating  his  breakfast.  Mr.  Lincoln  asked  him  im¬ 
mediately  into  the  cabinet  room,  and  after  making  a  few 
inquiries  about  mutual  friends  in  Illinois,  pulled  up  his 
chair  to  a  little  cabinet  of  drawers.  Swett,  of  course, 
awaited  in  silence  the  developments. 

Opening  a  drawrer,  Lincoln  took  out  a  manuscript 
which  he  said  was  a  letter  from  William  Lloyd  Gar¬ 
rison,  and  which  he  proceeded  to  read.  It  proved  to 
be  an  eloquent  and  passionate  appeal  for  the  immediate 
emancipation  of  the  slaves.  It  recalled  the  devotion 
and  loyalty  of  the  North,  but  pointed  out,  with  some¬ 
thing  like  peremptoriness,  that  unless  some  step  was 
taken  to  cut  out  by  the  roots  the  institution  of  slavery, 
the  expectations  of  the  North  would  be  disappointed, 
and  its  ardor  correspondingly  cooled.  It  went  into  the 
moral  wrong  that  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  war,  and 
insisted  that  the  war  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be 
ended  until  the  wrong  was  at  an  end. 


4 


49 


The  letter  throughout  was  entirely  characteristic  of 
Garrison. 

Laying  it  back  without  comment,  Mr.  Lincoln  took 
out  another  which  proved  to  be  a  letter  from  Garrett 
Davis,  of  Kentucky.  It,  too,  treated  of  emancipation; 
but  from  the  border  State  point  of  view.  It  carefully 
balanced  the  martial  and  moral  forces  of  the  North  and 
South,  and  pointed  out  that  if  the  border  States,  now 
divided  almost  equally  between  the  belligerents,  were 
thrown  unitedly  to  the  South,  a  conclusion  of  the  war 
favorable  to  the  North  would  be  next  to  impossible.  It 
then  proceeded  to  recall  that  slavery  was  an  institution 
of  these  border  States  with  which  their  people  had  grown 
familiar  and  upon  which  much  of  their  prosperity  wa3 
founded.  Emancipation,  especially  emancipation  with¬ 
out  compensation,  would,  in  that  quarter  of  the  country, 
be  looked  upon  as  a  stab  at  prosperity  and  a  departure 
from  the  original  Union  purposes  of  the  war.  It  begged 
Mr.  Lincoln  to  be  led  by  the  Northern  abolition  senti¬ 
ment  into  no  such  irretrievable  mistake. 

Laying  this  back,  Mr.  Lincoln  took  out  another,  which 
turned  out  to  be  from  a  then  prominent  Swiss  statesman, 
a  sympathizer  with  the  Northern  cause,  but  whose  name 
I  cannot  recall.  It  breathed  all  through  an  ardent  wish 
that  the  North  should  succeed.  The  writer’s  purpose  was 
to  call  attention  to  the  foreign  situation  and  the  im¬ 
portance  of  preventing  foreign  intervention.  This  he 
summed  up  as  follows :  The  governing  classes  in  England 
and  Napoleon  in  France  were  favorable  to  the  success  of 
the  Confederacy.  They  were  looking  for  a  pretext  upon 
which  to  base  some  sort  of  intervention.  Anything  that, 
in  international  law,  would  justify  intervention  would  be 
quickly  utilized. 

A  situation  justifying  such  a  pretext  must  be  avoided. 
The  writer  then  pointed  out  that  from  the  earliest  times 
any  interference  with  the  enemy’s  slaves  had  been  re¬ 
garded  as  a  cruel  and  improper  expedient ;  that  emanci¬ 
pation  would  be  represented  to  Europe  as  an  equivalent  of 
inciting  slave  insurrection,  and  would  be  seized  upon,  the 
writer  feared,  as  a  pretext  upon  which  forcibly  to  inter - 

4 


50 


vene.  The  letter  went  over  the  whole,  foreign  situation, 
bringing  out  clearly  this  phase  of  the  consequences  of 
emancipation. 

Laying  this  letter  back,  the  President  turned  to  Mr. 
Swett,  and  without  a  word  of  inquiry,  took  up  himself 
the  subject  of  emancipation,  not  only  in  the  phases 
pointed  out  by  the  letters  just  read,  but  every  possible 
phase  and  consequence  under  which  it  could  be  con¬ 
sidered.  For  more  than  an  hour  he  debated  the  situa¬ 
tion,  first  the  one  side  and  then  the  other  of  every 
question  arising.  His  manner  did  not  indicate  that  he 
wished  to  impress  his  views  upon  his  hearer,  but  rather 
to  weigh  and  examine  them  for  his  own  enlightenment  in 
the  presence  of  his  hearer. 

It  was  an  instance  of  stating  conclusions  aloud,  not 
that  they  might  convince  another,  or  be  combated  by  him, 
but  that  the  speaker  might  see  for  himself  how  they 
looked  when  taken  out  of  the  region  of  mere  reflection 
and  embodied  in  words. 

The  President’s  deliverance  was  so  judicial,  and  so 
free  from  the  quality  of  debate,  or  appearance  of  a  wish 
to  convince,  that  Mr.  Swett  felt  himself  to  be,  not  so 
much  a  hearer  of  Lincoln’s  views,  as  a  witness  of 
the  President’s  mental  operations.  The  President  was 
simply  framing  his  thought  in  words,  under  the  eye  of 
his  friend,  that  he  might  clear  up  his  own  mind. 

When  the  President  concluded,  he  asked  for  no  com¬ 
ment  and  made  no  inquiry,  but,  rising,  expressed  his 
hope  that  Mr.  Swett  would  get  home  safely,  and  intrusted 
to  him  some  messages  to  their  mutual  friends.  The 
audience  thus  ended.’ 

Mr.  Lincoln  had,  no  doubt,  determined  at  this  time  on 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  perhaps  had  in  his 
drawer  with  the  letters  he  real  to  Mr.  Swett,  the  origi¬ 
nal  draft  which,  as  he  afterwards  told  Mr.  F.  B.  Carpenter, 
he  prepared  “  without  consultation  with,  or  the  knowledge 
of  the  cabinet.”  It  was  on  July  22d  that,  “after  much 
anxious  thought,”  he  called  a  cabinet  meeting  to  con¬ 
sider  the  subject. 

“  I  said  to  the  cabinet,”  the  President  told  Mr.  Car- 


51 


penter,  “that  I  had  resolved  upon  this  step,  and  had  not 
called  them  together  to  ask  their  advice,  but  to  lay  the 
subject-matter  of  a  proclamation  before  them,  sugges¬ 
tions  as  to  which  would  be  in  order,  after  they  had  heard 
it  read. ” 

The  gist  of  the  proclamation  which  Mr.  Lincoln  read 
to  the  cabinet  was  that,  on  the  first  day  of  January, 
1863,  all  persons  held  as  slaves  within  any  State  or 
States  wherein  the  constitutional  authority  of  the  United 
States  should  not  then  be  practically  recognized,  should 
“  then,  thenceforward  and  forever  be  free. ”  He  called 
his  proclamation  “a  fit  and  necessary  military  measure,” 
and  prefaced  it  by  declaring  that,  upon  the  next 
meeting  of  Congress,  he  intended  to  recommend  a  prac¬ 
tical  plan  for  giving  pecuniary  aid  to  any  State  which  by 
that  time  had  adopted  “gradual  abolishment  of  slavery.” 
The  cabinet  seems  to  have  been  bewildered  by  the 
sweeping  proposition  of  the  President.  Nicolay  and 
Hay  quote  a  memorandum  of  the  meeting  made  by 
Secretary  Stanton,  in  which  he  says:  “The  measure 
goes  beyond  anything  I  have  recommended.”  Mr.  Lin¬ 
coln,  in  his  account  of  the  meeting  given  to  Mr.  Carpen¬ 
ter,  says : — 

“  Various  suggestions  were  offered.  *  *  *  Noth¬ 

ing,  however,  was  offered  that  I  had  not  already  fully 
anticipated  and  settled  in  my  own  mind,  until  Secretary 
Seward  spoke. 

He  said  in  substance:  “Mr.  President,  I  approve  of 
the  proclamation,  but  I  question  the  expediency  of  its 
issue  at  this  juncture.  The  depression  of  the  public 
mind,  consequent  upon  our  repeated  reverses,  is  so 
great  that  I  fear  the  effect  of  so  important  a  step 
It  may  be  viewed  as  the  last  measure  of  an  exhausted 
government,  a  cry  for  help;  the  government  stretching 
forth  its  hands  to  Ethiopia,  instead  of  Ethiopia  stretch¬ 
ing  forth  her  hands  to  the  government.”  His  idea^was 
that  it  would  be  considered  our  last  shriek  on  the  retreat. 
“  Now,”  continued  Mr.  Seward,  “  While  I  approve^the 
measure,  I  suggest,  sir,  that  you  postpone  its  issue,  until 
you  can  give  it  to  the  country,  supported  by  military 


52 


success,  instead  of  issuing  it,  as  would  be  the  case  now, 
upon  the  greatest  disasters  of  the  war!”  The  wisdom 
of  the  view  of  the  Secretary  of  State  struck  me  with  very 
great  force.  It  was  an  aspect  of  the  case  that,  in  all  my 
thoughts  upon  the  subject,  I  had  entirely  overlooked. 

The  result  was  that  I  put  the  draft  of  the  proclamation 
aside  as  you  do  your  sketch  for  a  picture,  waiting  for  a 
victory. 

From  time  to  time  I  added  or  changed  a  line,  touching 
it  up  here  and  there,  anxiously  waiting  the  progress  of 
events. 

The  victory  Mr.  Lincoln  waited  for  was  long  in  com¬ 
ing.  Each  new  delay  or  failure  only  intensified  the 
radical  anti- slavery  sentiment,  and  made  the  demand  for 
emancipation  more  emphatic  and  threatening.  The 
culmination  of  this  dissatisfaction  was  an  editorial 
signed  by  Horace  Greeley  and  printed  in  the  New  York 
“Tribune”  of  August  20th,  entitled  “The  Prayer  of 
20,000,000  ”  —  two  columns  of  bitter  and  unjust  accusa¬ 
tions  and  complaints  addressed  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  charging 
him  with  “  ignoring,  disregarding  and  defying  ”  the  laws 
already  enacted  against  slavery. 

Mr.  Lincoln  answered  it  in  a  letter  published  in  the 
“  National  Intelligencer  ”  of  Washington,  August  23d. 

The  document  challenges  comparison  with  the  State 
papers  of  all  times  and  all  countries  for  its  lucidity  and 
its  courage. 

As  to  the  policy  I  “  seem  to  be  pursuing,”  as  you  say,  I 
have  not  meant  to  leave  any  one  in  doubt. 

I  would  save  the  Union.  I  would  save  it  the  shortest 
way  under  the  Constitution.  The  sooner  the  national 
authority  can  be  restored,  the  nearer  the  Union  will  be 
tC  the  Union  as  it  was.”  If  there  be  those  who  would  not 
save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  save 
slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  If  there  be  those  who 
would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same 
time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  My  para¬ 
mount  object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the  Union,  and  is 
not  either  to  save  or  to  destroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save 
the  Union  without  freeing  any  slave,  I  would  do  it;  and  if 


53 


I  could  save  it  by  freeing  all  the  slaves,  I  would  do  it ;  and 
if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others 
alone,  I  would  also  do  that.  What  I  do  about  slavery 
and  the  colored  race,  I  do  because  I  believe  it  helps  to 
save  the  Union;  and  what  I  forbear,  I  forbear  because  I 
do  not  believe  it  would  help  to  save  the  Union.  I  shall 
do  less  whenever  I  shall  believe  what  I  am  doing  hurts 
the  cause,  and  I  shall  do  more  whenever  I  shall  believe 
doing  more  will  help  the  cause.  I  shall  try  to  correct 
errors  when  shown  to  be  errors,  and  I  shall  adopt  new 
views  as  fast  as  they  shall  appear  to  be  true  views. 

The  “  Greeley  faction  ”  as  it  was  called,  not  only  pur¬ 
sued  Mr.  Lincoln  through  the  press  and  pulpit  and  plat¬ 
form;  an  unending  procession  of  radical  committees  and 
delegations  waited  upon  him.  Although  he  was  at  that 
time,  by  his  own  statement,  adding  or  changing  a  line  of 
the  proclamation,  “  touching  it  up  here  and  there,”  he 
seems  almost  invariably  to  have  argued  against  emanci¬ 
pation  with  those  who  came  to  plead  for  it.  There  is 
every  indication  indeed  that  an  incessant  struggle  against 
violent  emancipation  went  on  in  his  mind  through  the 
whole  period.  He  regarded  it  as  the  act  of  a  dictator. 
He  feared  it  might  be  fruitless.  He  dreaded  the  injury  it 
would  do  the  loyal  people  of  the  South.  He  said  once 
to  a  friend,  that  he  had  prayed  to  the  Almighty  to  save 
him  from  the  necessity  of  it,  adopting  the  very  language 
of  Christ:  ‘‘If  it  be  possible  let  this  cup  pass  from  me.” 

In  this  awful  summer  of  1862,  beset  by  enemies  in  front 
and  rear,  with  failure  after  failure  crashing  upon  him, 
still  sore  from  his  great  personal  bereavement  of  the 
spring  before,  the  President  displayed  sometimes  a 
sarcasm  and  irritability  quite  unlike  the  almost  super¬ 
human  patience  which  was  characteristic  of  him.  Many 
committees  which  went  to  him  with  advice  and  warning 
were  answered  with  bitterness;  sometimes,  they 
claimed,  with  sneers.  The  futility  of  their  talk  was  no 
doubt  unendurable  to  the  overworked,  despairing  man. 
So  far  as  documentary  proof  of  Lincoln’s  irritability  at 
this  period  exists,  it  is  evident  that  it  was  aroused  only 
by  useless  demands  and  delays.  In  a  quantity  of  unpub- 


54 


lished  telegrams  which  have  been  collected  recently  by 
the  War  Department,  there  are  a  number  which  show 
this;  as,  for  illustration,  the  two  following:  — 

Washington,  D.  C.,  August  12,  1862. 

Governor  Andrews: 

Boston,  Massachusetts. 

Your  dispatch  saying  “I  can’t  get  those  regiments  off 
because  I  can’t  get  quick  work  out  of  the  United  States 
disbursing  office  and  the  paymaster”  is  received. 
Please  say  to  these  gentlemen  that  if  they  do  not  work 
quickly  I  will  make  quick  work  with  them.  In  the  name 
of  all  that  is  reasonable,  how  long  does  it  take  to  pay  a 
couple  of  regiments?  We  were  never  more  in  need  of 
the  arrival  of  regiments  than  now,  even  to-day. 

A.  Lincoln. 

Washington,  D.  C.,  August  23,  1862,  8  p.  m. 

Hon.  R.  Yates, 

Springfield,  Illinois. 

I  am  pained  to  hear  that  you  reject  the  services  of  an 
officer  we  sent  to  assist  in  organizing  and  getting  off 
troops.  Pennsylvania  and  Indiana  accepted  such  officers 
kindly,  and  they  now  have  more  than  twice  as  many  new 
troops  iu  the  field  as  all  the  other  Statss  together.  If 
Illinois  had  got  forward  as  many  troops  as  Indiana, 
Cumberland  Gap  would  soon  be  relieved  from  its  pres¬ 
ent  perils.  Please  do  not  ruin  us  on  punctilio. 

A.  Lincoln. 

The  victory  for  which  the  President  waited  came  on 
September  17th.  McClellan  had  followed  Lee  into  Mary¬ 
land,  and  defeated  him.  The  President  was  at  his  sum¬ 
mer  house  at  the  Soldiers’  Home  when  the  news  of  An- 
tietam  reached  him.  He  at  once  finished  the  second  draft 
of  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  and  called  the  cabinet 
together  on  Monday,  September  22d.  Secretary  Chase 
recorded  in  his  diary,  that  day,  how,  after  reading  his 


55 


colleagues  a  chapter  from  Artemus  Ward,  the  President 
C(  took  a  graver  tone.”  The  words  he  spoke,  as  recorded 
by  Mr.  Chase,  are  a  remarkable  revelation  of  the  man’s 
feeling  at  the  moment. 

I  have,  as  you  are  aware,  thought  a  great  deal  about 
the  relation  of  this  war  to  slavery;  and  you  all  remember 
that,  several  weeks  ago,  I  read  to  you  an  order  I  had 
prepared  on  this  subject,  which,  on  account  of  objections 
made  by  some  of  you,  was  not  issued.  Ever  since  then 
my  mind  has  been  much  occupied  with  this  subject,  and 
I  have  thought  all  along  that  the  time  for  acting  upon  it 
might  probably  come.  I  think  the  time  has  come  now. 
I  wish  it  was  a  better  time.  I  wish  that  we  were  in  a 
better  condition.  The  action  of  the  army  against  the 
rebels  has  not  been  quite  what  I  should  have  best  liked. 
But  they  have  been  driven  out  of  Maryland,  and  Penn¬ 
sylvania  is  no  longer  in  danger  of  invasion.  When  the 
rebel  army  was  at  Frederick,  I  determined  as  soon  as  it 
should  be  driven  out  of  Maryland,  toissue  a  proclamation 
of  emancipation,  such  as  I  thought  most  likely  to  be  use¬ 
ful.  I  said  nothing  to  any  one,  but  I  made  the  promise  to 
myself  [hesitating  a  little],  to  my  Maker.  The  rebel 
army  is  now  driven  out,  and  I  am  going  to  fulfill  that 
promise.  I  have  got  you  together  to  hear  what  I  have 
written  down.  I  do  not  wish  your  advice  about  the  main 
matter,  for  that  I  have  determined  for  myself.  This  I 
say  without  intending  anything  but  respect  for  any  one 
of  you.  But  I  already  kuow  the  views  of  each  on  this 
question.  They  have  been  heretofore  expressed,  and  I 
have  considered  them  as  thoroughly  and  carefully  as  I  can. 
What  I  have  written  is  that  which  my  reflections  have 
determined  me  to  say.  If  there  is  anything  in  the  ex¬ 
pressions  I  use,  or  in  any  minor  matter,  which  any  of 
you  thinks  had  best  be  changed,  I  shall  be  glad  to  re¬ 
ceive  the  suggestions.  One  other  observation  I  will 
make.  I  know  very  well  that  many  others  might,  in 
this  matter,  as  in  others,  do  better  than  I  can;  and  if 

I  was  satisfied  that  the  public  confidence  was  more 

• 

fully  possessed  by  any  one  of  them  than  by  me,  and 
knew  of  any  constitutional  way  in  which  he  could  be 


56 


put  in  my  place,  he  should  have  it.  I  would  gladly 
yield  to  him.  But,  though  I  believe  that  I  have  not  so 
much  of  the  confidence  of  the  people  as  I  had  some 
time  since,  I  do  not  know  that,  all  things  considered, 
any  other  person  has  more;  and,  however  this  may  be, 
there  is  no  way  in  which  I  can  have  another  man  put 
where  I  am.  I  am  here;  I  must  do  the  best  I  can, 
and  bear  the  responsibility  of  taking  the  course  which 
I  feel  I  ought  to  take. 

The  proclamation  appeared  in  the  newspapers  of  the 
following  morning.  There  was  no  exultation  in  the 
President’s  mind;  indeed  there  was  almost  a  groan  in 
the  words  which,  the  night  after  he  had  given  it  out, 
he  addressed  to  a  party  of  serenaders:  “I  can  only 
trust  in  God  that  I  have  made  no  mistake.”  The  events 
of  the  fall  brought  him  little  encouragement.  Indeed, 
the  promise  of  emancipation  seemed  to  effect  nothing 
but  discontent  and  uneasiness;  stocks  went  down,  troops 
fell  off.  In  five  great  States  —  Indiana,  Illinois,  Ohio, 
Pennsylvania,  and  New  York  —  the  elections  went  against 
him.  Little  but  menaces  came  from  Europe.  Many 
said  that  the  President  would  not  dare,  in  the  face  of 
the  unrest  of  the  country,  fulfill  his  promise,  and  issue 
the  proclamation.  But  when  Congress  opened  on  De¬ 
cember  1st,  he  did  submit  the  proclamation,  together 
with  the  plan  of  compensated  emancipation  which  he  h^d 
worked  out.  Over  one-half  of  the  message,  in  fact,  was 
given  to  this  plan. 

Mr.  Lincoln  pleaded  with  Congress  for  bis  measure  as 
he  had  never  pleaded  before.  He  argued  that  it  would 
“end  the  struggle  and  save  the  Union  forever,”  that  it 
would  u  cost  no  blood  at  all,”  that  Congress  could  do  it 
if  they  would  unite  with  the  executive,  that  the  “  good 
people  ”  would  respond  and  support  it  if  appealed  to. 

i(  It  is  not,”  he  said,  “  f  Can  any  of  us  imagine  better?  ’ 
but,  1  Can  we  all  do  better?’  Object  whatsoever  is  pos¬ 
sible,  still  the  question  occurs,  ‘  Can  we  do  better?  ’  The 
dogmas  of  the  quiet  past  are  inadequate  to  the  stormy 
present.  The  occasion  is  piled  high  with  difficulty,  and 
we  must  rise  with  the  occasion.  A s  our  case  is  new,  so 


we  must  think  anew  and  act  anew.  We  must  disenthrall 
ourselves,  and  then  we  shall  save  our  country. 

“Fellow-citizens,  we  cannot  escape  history.  We  of 
this  Congress  and  this  Administration  will  be  remem¬ 
bered  in  spite  of  ourselves.  No  personal  significance  or 
insignificance  can  spare  one  or  another  of  us.  The  fiery 
trial  through  which  we  pass  will  light  us  down,  in  honor 
or  dishonor,  to  the  latest  generation.  We  say  we  are 
for  the  Union. 

“The  world  will  not  forget  that  we  say  this.  We  know 
how  to  save  the  Union.  The  world  knows  we  do  know 
how  to  save  it.  We  —  even  we  here  —  hold  the  power 
and  bear  the  responsibility.  Iu  giving  freedom  to  the 
slave,  we  assure  freedom  to  the  free  —  honorable  alike  in 
what  we  give  and  what  we  preserve.  We  shall  nobly 
save  or  meanly  lose  the  last,  best  hope  of  earth.  Other 
means  may  succeed;  this  could  not  fail.  The  way  is 
plain,  peaceful,  generous,  just  —  a  way  which,  if  fol¬ 
lowed,  the  world  will  forever  applaud,  and  God  must 
forever  bless.” 

Nothing  ever  came  of  it,  for  before  any  of  the  border 
States  had  become  willing  to  accept  the  measure,  that 
necessity  which  Lincoln  foresaw  from  the  first  hadforced 
complete  emancipation  without  compensation. 

As  the  first  of  January  drew  near,  many  friends  of  the 
proclamation  doubted  that  Mr.  Lincoln  would  keep  his 
promise.  Among  these  was  the  Rev.  Byron  Sunderland, 
of  Washington,  at  that  time  chaplain  of  the  Senate  and 
one  of  the  most  aggressively  loyal  ministers  in  the  city. 
Dr.  Sunderland  feared  that  there  was  truth  in  the  rumor 
that  the  President  would  withdraw,  notissue,  the  procla¬ 
mation  on  the  1st  of  January,  and  on  the  Sunday  before 
the  new  year  he  preached  a  sermon  on  the  subject.  Mr. 
Z.  S.  Robbins,  of  Washington,  a  friend  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
asked  Dr.  Sunderland  to  go  with  him  to  the  President 
and  urge  him  to  keep  his  promise. 

“We  were  ushered  into  the  cabinet  room,”  says  Dr. 
Sunderland,  “  It  was  very  dim,  but  one  gas-jet  burning. 
As  we  entered,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  standing  at  the  farther 
end  of  the  long  table  which  filled  the  middle  of  the  room. 


58 


As  I  stood  by  the  door,  I  am  so  very  short,  that  I  was 
obliged  to  look  up  to  see  the  President.  Mr.  Robbins 
introduced  me,  and  I  began  at  once  by  saying:  4 1  have 
come,  Mr.  President,  to  anticipate  the  New  Year  with  my 
respects,  aud,  if  I  may,  to  say  to  you  a  word  about  the 
serious  condition  of  this  country? 

4  4  4  Go  ahead,  Doctor,’  replied  the  President;  4  every 
little  helps,’  but  I  was  too  much  iu  earnest  to  laugh  at 
his  sally  at  my  smallaess.  4  Mr.  President,’  Ij  continued, 

4  they  say  that  you  are  not  going  to  keep  your  promise  to 
give  us  the  Emancipation  Proclamation ;  that  it  is  your 
intention  to  withdraw  it.’ 

4*  4  Well,  Doctor,’  said  Mr.  Lincoln,  4  You  know  Peter 
was  going  to  do  it,  but  when  the  time  came  he  didn’t.’ 

44  4  Mr.  President,’  I  continued,  4  I  have  been  studying 
Peter.  He  did  not  deny  his  Master  uutil  after  his 
Master  rebuked  him  in  the  presence  of  his  enemy.  You 
have  a  master,  too,  Mr.  Linccdn,  the  American  people. 
Don’t  deny  your  master  until  he  has  rebuked  you  before 
all  the  world.’ 

44  My  earnestness  seemed  to  interest  the  President,  and 
his  whole  tone  changed  immediately.  4  Sit  down,  Doctor 
Sunderland,’ he  said ;  4  let  us  talk.’ 

44  We  seated  ourselves  in  the  room,  and  for  a  moment 
the  President  was  silent,  his  elbow  resting  on  the  table, 
his  big,  gnarled  hands  closed  over  his  forehead.  Then 
looking  up  gravely  at  me,  he  began  to  speak:  — 

4  4  4  Doctor,  if  it  had  been  left  to  you  and  me,  there 
would  have  been  no  war.  If  it  had  been  left  to  you  and 
me  there  would  have  been  no  cause  for  this  war;  but  it 
was  not  left  to  us.  God  has  allowed  men  to  make  slaves 
of  their  fellows.  He  permits  this  war.  He  has  before 
Him  a  strange  spectacle.  We,  on  our  side,  are  praying 
Him  to  give  us  victory,  because  we  believe  we  are  right; 
but  those  on  the  other  side  pray  Him,  too,  for  victory, 
believing  they  are  right.  What  must  He  think  of  us? 
And  what  is  coming  from  the  struggle?  What  will  be 
the  effect  of  it  all  on  the  whites  and  on  the  negroes?  ’ 
And  then  suddenly  a  ripple  of  amusement  broke  the 
solemn  tone  of  his  voice,  4  As  for  the  negroes,  Doctor, 


59 


and  what  is  going  to  become  of  them:  I  told  Ben  Wade 
the  other  day,  that  it  made  me  think  of  a  story  I  read  in 
one  of  my  first  books,  “  iEsop’s  Fables.”  It  was  an  old 
edition,  and  had  curious  rough  wood-cuts,  one  of  which 
showed  four  white  men  scrubbing  a  negro  in  a  potash 
kettle  filled  with  cold  water.  The  text  explained  that 
the  men  thought  that  by  scrubbing  the  negro  they  might 
make  him  white.  Just  about  the  time  they  thought  they 
were  succeeding,  he  took  cold  and  died.  Now,  I  am 
afraid  that  by  the  time  we  get  through  with  this  war  the 
negro  will  catch  cold  and  die.’ 

“  The  laugh  had  hardly  died  away  before  he  resumed 
his  grave  tone,  and  for  half  an  hour  he  discussed  the 
question  of  emancipation.  He  stated  it  in  every  light, 
putting  his  points  so  clearly  that  each  statement  was  an 
argument.  He  showed  the  fullest  appreciation  of  every 
side.  It  was  like  a  talk  of  one  of  the  old  prophets. 
And  though  he  did  not  tell  me  at  the  end  whether  the 
proclamation  would  be  issued  or  not,  I  went  home  com¬ 
forted  and  uplifted,  aud  I  believed  in  Abraham  Lincoln 
from  that  day.” 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  no  idea  of  withdrawing  the  proclama¬ 
tion.  On  December  30tb,  he  read  the  document  to  his 
cabinet  and  asked  the  members  to  take  copies  home  and 
give  him  their  criticisms. 

The  next  day  at  cabinet  meeting  these  criticisms  and 
suggestions  were  presented  by  the  different  members. 
Mr.  Lincoln  took  them  all  to  his  office,  where,  during 
that  afternoon,  and  the  morning  of  January  1st, 
1863,  he  rewrote  the  document.  He  was  called  from 
it  at  eleven  o’clock  to  go  to  the  East  Room  and 
begin  the  customary  New  Year’s  hand-shaking.  It  was 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon  before  he  was  free  and 
back  in  the  executive  chamber,  where  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation,  which  in  the  interval  had  been  duly 
engrossed  at  the  State  Department  and  brought  to  the 
White  House  by  Secretary  Seward  and  his  son,  was 
waiting  his  signature. 

“  They  found  the  President  alone,”  writes  Frederick 
Seward,  “  in  his  room.  The  broad  sheet  was  spread 


GO 


out  before  him  on  the  cabinet  table.  Mr.  Lincoln  dipped 
his  pen  in  the  ink,  and  then,  holding  it  a  moment  above 
the  paper,  seemed  to  hesitate.  Looking  around,  he 
said :  “  c  I  never,  in  my  life,  felt  more  certain  that  I  was 
doing  right  than  I  do  in  signing  this  paper.  But  I  have 
been  receiving  calls  and  shaking  hands  since  nine 
[eleven?]  o’clock  this  morning,  till  my  arm  is  stiff  and 
numb.  Now,  this  signature  is  one  that  will  be  closely 
examined,  and  if  they  find  my  hand  trembled,  they  will 
say  “  he  had  some  compunctions.”  But,  any  way,  it  is 
going  to  be  done.” 

“  So  saying,  he  slowly  and  carefully  wrote  his  name  at 
the  bottom  of  the  proclamation.” 

At  last  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  was  a  fact. 
But  there  was  little  rejoicing  in  the  heart  of  the  man  who 
had  framed  and  given  it  to  the  world.  In  issuing  it,  all 
he  had  dared  hope  was  that  in  the  long  run  it  would  give 
greater  gain  than  loss.  He  was  not  confident  that  this 
would  be  so,  but  he  was  willing  to  risk  it.  “  Hope  and 
fear  and  doubt  contended  over  the  new  policy  in  uncer¬ 
tain  conflict,”  he  said  months  later.  As  he  had  foreseen, 
dark  days  followed.  There  were  mutinies  in  the  army; 
there  was  ridicule;  there  was  a  long  interval  of  waiting 
for  results.  Nothing  but  the  greatest  care  in  enforcing 
the  proclamation  could  make  it  a  greater  good  than  evil, 
and  Mr.  Lincoln  now  turned  all  his  energies  to  this  new 
task. 

uWe  are  like  whalers,”  he  said  one  day,  “who 
have  been  long  on  a  chase,  we  have  at  last  got  the  har¬ 
poon  into  the  monster,  but  we  must  now  look  how  we 
steer,  or  with  one  flop  of  his  tail  he  will  send  us  all  into 
eternity.” 

When  Jefferson  wrote  the  Ordinances  governing  the 
Northwest  Territory  he  prohibited  slavery  therein  for¬ 
ever.  He  never  added  a  single  slave  to  the  stock  he 
inherited.  He  said  that  slavery  could  not  always  exist 
in  the  United  States,  and  that,  when  the  negroes  were 
free,  the  whites  and  negroes  could  not  live  together  in 
peace  for  any  considerable  length  of  time. 


61 


If  the  people  had  called  for  it  Jefferson  would  have 
solved  the  negro  question  for  us  a  hundred  years  ago. 

Forty  years  ago  that  old  “  bunch  of  ugliness  and  hon¬ 
esty.”  — Abe  Lincoln  —  had  the  question  solved,  as  Ida  M. 
Tarbell  shows  in  tC  Lincoln  and  the  Emancipation  Proc¬ 
lamation.”  But  the  people  and  the  Congress  were 
either  too  narrow-minded  or  too  mean  to  accept  “  Old 
Honest  Abe’s  ”  scheme  for  compensated  emancipation 
and  colonization. 

I  wonder  if  the  people  of  this  country  are  ready  now 
to  take  up  the  negro  problem  and  solve  it  in  a  sensible 
way. 

All  the  women  of  America  with  whom  I  have  talked, 
and  four-fifths  of  the  men  are  anxious  to  have  the  negroes 
colonized. 

I  will  now  ask  my  reader  to  go  back  and  read  “  Lin¬ 
coln  and  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  ”  once  more 
carefully,  then  read  the  following  excerpts  from  speeches 
made  not  long  since  by  John  Temple  Graves  of  Georgia :  — 

“The  mob  knows  its  business  and  the  mob  does  its 
work.  And  the  mob  to-day  is  the  sternest, the  strongest, 
and  the  most  effective  restraint  that  the  age  holds  for 
the  control  of  the  monstrous  crime  which  it  avenges. 
The  lyncher  does  not  exterminate  the  rapist,  but  holds 
him  mightily  in  check.  It  is  folly  to  protest  against  this 
truth.  Without  the  mob  there  would  be  a  hundred 
assaults  where  there  is  one.  Without  the  mob  the  South 
to-day  would  not  be  a  place  to  live  in. 

“  Thousands  of  vicious  negroes  halt  in  terror  before 
the  blazing  anger  and  the  fiery  vengeance  of  the  mob. 

“Criminal?  Yes.  Lawless?  Yes.  Ought  to  be  abol¬ 
ished?  If  possible,  yes.  But  as  a  sheer,  cold,  patent 
fact,  the  mob  stands  to-day  as  the  highest,  strongest 
and  most  potent  bulwark  between  the  women  of  the 
South  and  such  a  carnival  of  crime  as  would  infuriate 
the  world  and  precipitate  the  annihilation  of  the  negro 
race. 

“  It  is  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  say.  It  is  not  a  popular 
thing  to  say.  But  it  is  the  only  true  thing  to  say. 

“  It  is  necessary  to  speak  plainly  now.  The  mob  has 


62 


broken  the  barriers  of  section  and  lynching  is  at]last  a 
national  crime.  The  spirit  of  lawlessness  is  clearly  an 
evil  of  the  times.  The  touch  of  the  mob  has  made  the 
Republic  kin.  For  every  Newman  there  is  a  Washington ; 
For  Palmetto  in  Georgia,  Kansas  has  its  Leavenworth; 
Sam  Hose  is  matched  by  Alex.  White;  the  Evansville 
riots  surpass  the  riots  in  Cairo. 

“  The  mob  that  shoots  in  Mississippi  is  answered  by 
the  mob  that  slays  in  Danville,  Ill, 
u  Akron,  0.,  storms  a  negro’s  refuge  in  jail  almost 
within  sight  of  Canton,  where  sleeps  the  martyr  Presi¬ 
dent —  the  best  beloved  man  who  has  occupied  the  White 
House  since  the  Father  of  his  Country.  Pana  and  Carter- 
vllle  thrust  their  murderous  Winchesters  into  the  black 
faces  of  the  workmen  who  come  to  delve  in  the  mines 
of  Illinois. 

“  A  mob  in  Chicago,  ready  with  a  rope,  chases  a  negro 
through  the  streets.  New  York,  the  metropolis  and  cos- 
mopolis  of  our  world,  has  its  central  section  from 
Thirtieth  street  to  Thirty- first  torn  by  a  race  riot  as 
fierce  and  as  relentless  as  New  Orleons, 

“  And  evenin  Springfield,  Mass.,  right  in  New  England’s 
noble  heart,  the  police  battalions  battled  half  the  night 
to  rescue  from  the  jlynchers  a  bibulous  citizen  who,  with 
a  swipe  of  a  broken  beer  glass,  had  nipped  from  its  place 
another  New  England  gentleman’s  obtrusive  nose.  The 
question  has  come  home  to  the  country  at  last.” 

“  I  put  in  evidence  here  the  fact  that  the  Southern 
people  have  held  women  in  peculiar  and  almost  romantic 
esteem.  I  am  free  by  the  record  to  assert  that  no 
people  in  history  have  ever  compassed  with  greater 
tenderness  and  with  more  reverential  chivalry  the 
females  of  their  race.” 

“  The  crime  which  begot  lynching  was  a  crime  against 
Southern  womanhood  —  a  crime  blacker  than  arson  and 
deadlier  than  assassination  —  a  crime  beside  which 
murder  is  a  misdemeanor  and  death  a  holiday  —  a  crime 
that  killed  thrice  and  each  death  without  a  resurrec¬ 
tion  —  a  crime  that  blasted  memory  while  it  murdered 


63 


reputation  —  a  crime  unspeakable  and  unthinkable  this 
side  of  hell.” 

“  There  is  no  real  remedy  but  one  ”  —  separation . 

“  This,  my  countn  men,  is  a  case  of  surgery  —  surgery 
heroic,  but  beneficent  —  the  knife  that  severs  the  limb, 
but  saves  the  life.  For  no  statute  will  permanently  solve 
this  problem.  No  anodyne  of  law,  no  counter-irritant  of 
legislation  will  quiet  it  longer  than  the  hour  of  appli¬ 
cation. 

u  The  evil  is  in  the  blood  of  races;  the  disease  is  in 
the  bones  and  marrow  and  the  skin  of  antagonistic 
peoples.”  —  From  “  The  Mob  Spirit  of  the  South.” 

“  The  prejudices  of  race  is  a  pointing  of  providence, 
and  the  antagonism  of  peoples  is:  The  fixed  policy  by 
which  God  peoples  the  different  portions  of  the  universe 
and  establishes  the  individuality  of  the  nations. 

The  act  that  brought  these  peoples  together  on  this 
continent  was  a  sin  of  the  fathers,  a  sin  of  greed,  an 
iniquity  of  trade,  and  the  sorrow  and  suffering  of  the 
present  is  for  the  sin  of  the  past  —  a  sin  against  nature 
and  a  sin  against  God. 

The  curse  can  be  lifted  only  when  nature  is  vindicated 
and  God  is  obeyed.  The  problem  will  be  solved  only  when 
the  negro  is  restored  to  the  “  bounds  of  his  habitation.” 
It  is  neither  impossible  nor  impracticable.  The  elements 
are, willing,  and  the  way  is  in  reach.  This  is  not  a  day 
of  impossibilities.  The  hand  of  the  Almighty  is  steadily 
opening  the  way. 

It  may  be  that  the  islands  of  the  sea  were  placed  by 
providence  in  our  keeping  to  furnish  an  answer  to  the 
problem  of  the  time. 

The  negro  is  an  accident  —  an  unwilling,  a  blameless, 
but  an  unwholesome,  unwelcome,  helpless,  unassimilable 
element  in  our  civilization.  He  is  not  made  for  our 
times.  He  is  not  framed  to  share  in  the  duty  and  the 
destiny  which  he  perplexes  and  beclouds. 

Let  us  put  him  kindly  and  humanely  out  of  the  way. 
Let  us  give  him  a  better  chance  than  he  has  ever  had  in 
history,  and  let  us  have  done  with  him.  Let  us  solve  his 
problem,  frankly,  fearlessly,  nobly  and  speedily.  Let  us 


64 

put  it  behind  us.  Let  us  purify  our  politics  of  the  per¬ 
plexity.  Let  us  liberate  the  South  to  vote  and  to 
think  like  freemen  upon  the  mighty  issues  of  the 
times.  *  *  * 

We  have  been  ready  in  the  South  for  years  to  divide  on 
party  lines.  We  do  not  dare  to  do  it.  With  the  white 
race  divided,  the  negro  is  held  up  once  more  to  the  ballot 
box  and  becomes  the  balance  of  power  in  the  policies  of 
the  time. 

We  have  our  separate  and  divergent  convictions  on 
economic  issues.  We  crush  these  under  the  iron  heel  of 
necessity.  We  have  our  varying  interests  that  would 
naturally  be  expressed  in  opposing  politics.  We  sacrifice 
these  material  issues  to  the  greater  stake.  And  the  great 
people  of  the  South,  dominated  and  solidified  by  the  fear 
of  this  unwholesome  balance,  are  whipped,  protesting, 
into  line  behind  expediency,  and  forced  to  compulsory 
union  in  a  single  party.  The  education  of  the  hustings, 
the  friction  of  ideas,  the  vigilant  watchfulness  of  jealous 
partisanship,  and  the  political  libeity  of  the  thinker  and 
of  the  voter  are  all  lost  in  the  shadow  of  the  somber 
appehension. 

In  a  land  of  light  and  liberty,  in  an  age  of  enlighten¬ 
ment  and  law,  the  women  of  the  South  are  prisoners  to 
danger  and  to  fear.  While  your  women  may  walk  from 
suburb  to  suburb,  and  from  township  to  township,  with¬ 
out  escort  and  without  alarm,  there  is  not  a  woman  in  the 
South  —  wife  or  daughter  —  who  would  be  permitted  or 
who  would  dare  to  walk  at  twilight  unguarded  through 
the  residence  streets  of  a  populous  town,  or  to  ride  the 
outside  highways  at  midday.  The  terror  of  the  twilight 
deepens  with  the  darkness,  and  in  the  rural  regions  every 
farmer  leaves  his  home  with  apprehension  in  the  morn¬ 
ing  and  thanks  God  when  he  comes  from  the  fields  at 
evening  to  find  all  well  with  the  women  of  his  home. 

For  behind  the  prejudice  of  race  stalks  the  fiend  of  lust, 
and  behind  the  rapist  thunders  the  mob,  engine  of  ven¬ 
geance,  monstrous,  lawless,  deplorable,  but  under  the 
uncured  defects  of  the  law,  the  fiery  terror  of  the  crim¬ 
inal,  and  the  chief  defense  of  woman. 


65 


This  is  also  a  problem  of  justice.  Fair  as  our  designs 
and  equitable  as  our  verdicts,  as  tested  by  the  highest 
courts,  the  prejudice  of  race  inevitably  poisons  law  and 
tempts  justice,  from  the  jury’s  box  to  the  judge’s  bench. 

It  is  a  problem  of  religious  unity  —  separating  brethren 
and  dividing  usefulness.  For  more  than  one  great  relig¬ 
ious  body  in  this  country,  cherishing  a  common  creed, 
believing  in  one  Lord,  one  faith,  one  baptism,  are  sun¬ 
dered  and  set  in  separate  and  sectional  camps  by  the 
clash  of  convictions  here. 

It  is  a  problem  of  numbers.  Four  million  slaves  were 
freed.  There  are  nine  million  negrces  now.  The  prob¬ 
lem  grows  in  difficulty  with  marvelously  increasing  num¬ 
bers  and  is  magnified  in  vitality  by  delay.  If  antago¬ 
nisms  now  so  fundamental  are  not  softened,  if  prejudices 
now  so  serious  are  not  healed,  then  the  futuie daikens 
and  we  will  enter  with  swollen  numbers  upon  a  period  of 
strife  and  wrangle  in  whose  perils  our  present  troubles 
will  not  be  remembered.  Optimism  is  easy.  Optimism 
is  popular.  But  the  logic  of  conditions  is  ominous  with 
warning  and  it  is  braver  to  be  honest,  and  wiser  to  be 
prepared. 

Here,  then,  the  issues —  Unity  of  the  Republic,  mate¬ 
rial  development,  purity  of  politics,  political  independ¬ 
ence, respect  for  the  ballot,  reverence  for  the  Constitution, 
the  safety  of  our  homes,  the  sanctity  of  our  women,  the 
supremacy  of  law,  the  sacredness  of  justice,  the  integ¬ 
rity  of  race,  and  the  unity  of  the  church.  There  is  not  a 
phase  .of  our  civilization,  there  is  not  a  principle  of  our 
race,  there  is  not  a  fundamental  of  society,  that  is  not 
wrapped  in  the  hopeless  tangle  which  this  problem 
weaves. 

These  are  difficulties  which  compass  the  white  man  of 
the  South.  Heaven  knows  they  are  serious  enough. 

But  what  of  the  negro?  It  would  be  cruel  and  unkind 
to  cast  up  the  balances  of  this  great  account  without 
considering  him.  I  speak  the  representative  sentiment 
of  the  South  when  I  say  that  we  would  not  come  to  the 
con  sideralions  of  this  tremerdous  issue  without  a  high 

5 


66 


and  humane  consideration  for  the  negro.  How  does  the 
problem  come  to  him,  and  what  does  the  future  hold? 

Will  the  white  man  permit  the  negro  to  have  an  equal 
partin  the  industrial,  political,  social  and  civil  advan¬ 
tages  of  the  United  States?  This,  as  I  understand  it,  is 
the  question  which  involves  his  life  and  destiny.’ 

These  words  come  from  a  negro  —  the  wisest,  the 
most  thoughtful  and  the  most  eloquent  negro  of  his 
time,  as  discreet  as  Washington,  a  deeper  thinker  and 
much  more  eloquent  man.  But  for  one  hour  of  the 
Atlanta  Exposition,  Council  of  Huntsville  might  stand 
to-day  where  Washington  of  Tuskegee  stands — as  the 
recognized  leader  of  his  race. 

This  question  asked  by  Council,  as  the  deliberate  repre¬ 
sentative  of  his  people,  is  the  core  of  the  negro  problem. 
The  answer  to  it  is  in  every  white  man’s  heart, 
even  if  it  does  not  lie  openly  on  every  white  man’s  lips. 

It  may  be  expressed  in  diplomacy;  it  may  be  veiled  in 
indiscretion;  it  may  be  softened  in  philanthropy;  it  may 
be  guarded  in  politic  utterance,  and  oftenest  of  all  it  is 
restrained  by  ultra  conservatism  and  personal  timidity. 

But  whenever  the  answer  to  this  vital  question  comes, 
stripped  of  verbiage  and  indirection,  it  rings  like  a 
martial  bugle  in  the  single  syllable  — <(  No.” 

This  may  not  be  right,  but  it  is  honest.  It  may  not  be 
just,  but  it  is  evident.  It  may  not  be  politic,  but  it  is  a 
great,  glaring,  indisputable,  indestructible  fact.  North 
and  South,  the  answer,  wherever  it  is  honest,  is  the 
same.  I  agree  with  Albion  Tourgee  that  there  are  not 
ten  thousand  men  in  the  Republic  who  can  answer  that 
question  in  the  affirmative.  Council  knows  the  answer 
and  states  it  with  the  courage  of  a  man.  Bishop  Turner 
knows  it. 

Bishop  Holsey  knows  it;  Bryden  and  Bruce  and  Taylor 
knew  it;  the  Chicago  papers  knew  it;  I  think  that 
Booker  Washington  knows  it  sadly  in  his  heart,  and  I 
believe  that  every  thoughtful  gentleman  who  strips 
theorv  from  the  bare  form  of  fact  knows  it  here  and 

•r 

everywhere. 

This  is  from  first  to  last  a  race  problem.  It  is  an  issue 


67 


of  race  and  not  of  politics.  It  is  a  thing  of  skin  and  type, 
and  not  of  section  or  condition.  It  is  a  part  of  the  uni¬ 
versal  problem.  The  history  of  man  has  been  written 
in  race  antagonism  and  in  race  separation.  The  Hebrew 
and  Egyptian,  the  Jew  and  the  Gentile,  the  Turk  and  the 
Christian,  Magyar  and  Hungarian,  Venetian  and  Moor, 
Mexican  and  Texan,  Negro  and  Chinaman,  White  Man 
and  Indian  —  the  repulsion  is  the  same. 

Under  this  prejudice  the  negro  can  never,  North  or 
South,  be  received  in  equal  social  and  personal  relations 
with  the  families  of  the  white  race  and  can  never,  there¬ 
fore,  be  a  social  equal  with  the  white  man.  Under  this 
prejudice  he  can  never,  North  or  South,  be  permitted  to 
govern  in  any  State  or  country,  even  where  he  has  a 
majority,  and  he  can  never,  therefore,  be  a  political 
equal.  If  he  can  have,  then,  neither  social  nor  political 
equality  —  and  every  fact  and  all  theory  and  all  instinct 
and  every  unbroken  precedent  declare  that  he  cannot  — 
then  he  can  never  under  these  conditions  reach  the 
full  development  of  a  citizen  or  the  full  stature  of  a  man. 
If  he  remains  in  this  country  he  must  remain  as  au 
inferior,  and  his  suffrage  becomes  a  mockery  and  his 
liberty  a  farce.  There  is  not  a  line  of  light,  of  promise, 
of  equality,  for  him  in  any  field.  This  is  the  core  of  my 
contention  —  the  basis  of  my  argument.  All  our  splendid 
platitudes  are  wrecked  on  this  stern  fact.  All  our  brave 
philanthropies  beat  out  their  beautiful  lives  on  this 
inexorable  truth :  The  negro  fronts  a  hopeless  and 
unequal  competition. 

There  he  stands  —  that  helpless  and  unfortunate  in¬ 
ferior.  For  his  sake  the  one  difference  has  widened 
between  the  sections  of  our  common  country.  Over 
his  black  body  we  have  shed  rivers  of  blood  and  treasure 
to  emphasize  our  separate  convictions  of  his  destiny. 
And  yet,  as  the  crimson  tide  rolls  away  into  the  years 
we  realize  that  all  this  blood  and  treasure  and  travail 
was  spent  in  vain,  and  that  the  negro,  whom  a  million 
Americans  died  to  free,  is  in  present  bond  and  future 
promise  still  a  slave,  whipped  by  circumstance,  trodden 
under  foot  by  iron  and  ineradicable  prejudice;  shut  out 


68 


forever  from  the  opportunities  which  are  the  heritage 
of  liberty. 

Shall  the  great  Northern  section  of  our  country  always 
turn  its  hand  against  the  great  Southern  section  of  our 
country?  Shall  the  young  American  of  the  North  steel 
his  heart  against  the  young  American  of  the  South  over 
an  alien’s  cause?  Shall  the  children  of  one  blood  aud  of 
common  glorious  heritage  divide  in  bitterness  over  a 
stranger  in  our  midst?  Shall  the  memories  of  Eutaw  and 
Yorktown  be  obliterated  in  the  recollections  of  Wil¬ 
mington  and  Newrman?  Shall  the  peace  and  harmony 
of  this  great  Republic  be  forever  imperiled  for  the 
sake  of  the  negro,  whose  faults  and  whose  weakness 
so  wonderfully  outweigh  his  virtues  and  his  gratitude? 
Shall  the  black  man  from  Africa  hinder  and  delay 
the  work  and  the  destiny  of  our  imperial  race? 

Great  God,  the  idea  is  monstrous  and  unthinkable! 
The  South  is  neither  cruel  nor  unpatriotic,  and  the  North 
knows  it.  The  North  is  neither  immovable  nor  vindic¬ 
tive,  and  the  South  knows  it.  If  either  of  us  is  mis¬ 
taken,  and  if  both  of  us  is  misunderstood,  we  are  yet 
one  people,  and  we  must  meet  upon  the  plane  of  our 
brotherhood  and  our  destiny. 

Men  and  women  of  the  university,  I  appeal  to  you  who 
make  the  future,  I  appeal  for  Caucasian  unity.  I  appeal 
for  the  imperial  destiny  of  our  mighty  race.  This  is  our 
country.  We  made  it.  We  molded  it.  We  control  it, 
and  we  always  will.  We  have  done  great  things.  We 
have  mighty  things  yet  to  do.  In  the  name  of  God  and 
of  our  mission,  I  appeal  to  this  great,  conquering  Cau¬ 
casian  race  to  lock  arms  and  go  forward,  and  onward 
and  upward  to  its  essential  work.”  — From  “  The  Prob¬ 
lem  of  the  Races.” 

“  There  is  one  solution,  and  but  one.  Cold  and  cruel 
as  it  may  seem,  the  negro  must  go.  If  not  voluntarily, 
then  by  force.  His  presence  here  is  a  perpetual  menace. 
It  keeps  out  immigration  and  capital.  It  engenders  bad 
blood  between  North  and  South.  It  keeps  alive  bitter 
memories.  An  unnamed  fear  fills  every  Southern  heart 
and  unnamed  dread  darkens  every  Southern  home.  Go 


69 


he  must.  Better  for  black  man,  better  for  white  man. 
We  who  have  girl  babies  will  rest  more  easily  in  our 
graves  hereafter,  if  we  die  in  the  proud  consciousness 
that  this  problem  has  not  been  left  by  cowardly  policy  to 
posterity. 

But  the  negro  is  a  property  holder;  so  was  the  Indian. 
Civilization  is  above  constitutions,  it  makes  and  unmakes 
them  at  will.  The  government  is  amply  able  to  deport 
or  colonize  them,  and  all  it  needs  is  a  sense  of  the  serious 
need  for  it.  That  sense  is  being  deepened  day  by  day.  If 
the  money  squandered  in  the  Quixotic  war  with  Spain, 
in  the  unholy  and  inhuman  butchery  of  Filipinos,  in 
gorging  the  greed  of  legislative  leeches,  had  been  devoted 
to  this  paramount  issue,  it  would  have  been  settled. 
Lift  this  incubus  from  the  South,  and  she  will  become 
the  garden  of  the  world.”  —  Wm.  Ellis  Abernethy,  of  the 
Morganton,  N.  C,,  Herald. 

”  I  doubt  whether  civilization  was  ever  confronted  by  a 
graver  problem.” — Dr.  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  Director  of  the 
Peabody  and  Slater  Funds. 

“If  you  deport  the  negroes  who  will  do  the  dirty 
work?  ”  “  There  must  be  a  ground  chunk,”  says  an  ex¬ 

carpet-bag  rule  man. 

I  answer:  Let  every  man  in  this  Republic  do  his  own 
dirty  work  or  pay  good  wages  to  the  man  who  does  it  for 
him. 

That  is  a  low,  mean  order  of  philanthropy  that  would 
keep  the  negro  here  as  a  “ground  chunk” — a  worker 
in  dirt. 

Another  man  says:  “  Certain  industries  in  our  country 
will  perish  if  you  take  the  negroes  away.”  No,  they  will 
only  be  crippled  temporarily.  White  men  can  produce 
cotton  and  sugar  —  work  in  the  Southern  States  —  better 
than  the  negroes.  Make  the  South  a  white  man’s  coun¬ 
try  and  the  South  will  prosper  as  no  other  country  in  all 
the  world  has  prospered.  Northern  men  and  women 
will  then  go  South  to  live. 

f  There  is  one  outstanding  objection  to  your  plan  of 
deportation  and  colonization ;  ’  ‘the  negro  doesn’t  want 
it,’  says  a  friend.  I  answer,  it  is  time  for  us  to  begin  to 


70 


teach  the  negro  that  he  does  want  it,  and  wants  it  badly. 
Why  deceive  him  longer? 

I  wouldn’t  degrade  a  good  herd  of  stock  by  mixing 
them  with  an  inferior  herd.  Good  farmers  “  breed  up  ” 
their  flocks  and  herds.  Are  we  not  to  consider  the  proud 
race  to  which  we  belong  in  the  matter  of  “  breeding  up  ” 
or  shall  we  become  a  lot  of  mangy  mongrels? 

Queen  Victoria  said  in  her  Jubilee  address:  ‘‘Before 
the  onward  march  of  the  English  people  the  negro  must 
go.”  England  teaches  equality  of  races  but  “ actions 
speak  louder  than  words.”  I  took  a  Portuguese  negro 
from  St.  Viucent,  Cape  Verde  Islands,  with  me  to  a  hotel 
in  London  to  see  if  they  practiced  what  they  preach.  The 
negro  was  promptly  turned  away. 

England  has  no  race  question  at  ’ome,  and,  if  she  per¬ 
sists  in  her  policy  of  equal  rights  to  all  races  in  Australia 
and  South  Africa,  my  word  for  it,  she  will  lose  those 
colonies.  Australia  has  raised  the  cry:  “Australia  for 
the  white  man,”  and,  I  have  no  doubt,  she  will  make  it 
the  white  man’s  country. 

I  have  notified  my  friends  in  Sydney,  Australia,  to  be 
ready  to  admit  me  to  citizenship  as  soon  as  they  make 
their  country  the  white  man’s  country. 

There  ought  to  be  a  black  man’s  country,  and  the  black 
man  ought  to  be  proud  of  bis  country  when  he  gets  it. 

“The  negro  is  the  only  man  that  is  ashamed  of  his 
race,”  says  my  friend,  Judge  Campbell  of  West  Virgnia. 
This  is  true.  Let  a  negro  have  a  little  blood  of  the  white 
man  in  his  veins  and  he  apologizes  for  the  negro  blood. 
He  s*ys,  “  My  grandfather  was  a  white  man.” 

A  mu’atto  woman  in  Columbia,  Mo.,  said,  “  I’d  rather 
my  daughter  would  marry  the  meanest  white  boy  on  earth 
than  to  marry  the  best  negro.” 

While  we  must  deport  and  colonize  all  who  have  negro 
blood  in  their  veins  we  may  very  properly  buy  enough 
territory  in  Mexico  or  South  America  for  such  of  those 
mulattoes,  quadroons,  and  octaroons  as  may  not  care  to 
go  with  the  “jet  blicks  ”  to  Africa.  The  white  men  of 
this  country  who  are  responsible  for  the  existence  of  the 
mixed  breed  will  no  doubt  lend  a  hand  to  help  their  own 


71 


blood.  I  say  white  men  because  the  white  women  — be 
it  said  to  their  honor  and  glory  —  are  not  responsible 
for  any  considerable  portion  of  the  mixed  breed. 

Yes,  sir’ee;  give  the  “  coons  ”  a  flag  and  help  them 
to  take  on  race  pride,  and  if  there  be  any  more  of  those 
Abolitionists  (the  biggest  set  of  donkeys  that  ever 
afflicted  any  country)  in  this  country  of  ours,  I  3ay  make 
them  go  with  the  negroes  to  their  new  home  and  make 
them  stay  there  forever  and  a  day. 

They,  the  Abolitionists,  fixed  up  a  dose  of  u  race 
equality”  for  the  Southern  whites  but  the  Southern 
whites  have  persistently  refused  to  take  it  and  now  they 
very  generously  and  kindly  offer  the  same  dose  to  the 
remnant  of  the  Abolitionists  and  their  descendants. 

With  a  few  rare  exceptions  it  seems  that  the  descend¬ 
ants  of  Abolitionists  refuse  to  take  the  medicine. 

We  of  the  South  most  heartily  sympathize  with  the 
young  people  of  the  North.  They  are  not  held  account¬ 
able  for  the  sins  of  the  fathers,  and  we  say  to  them, 
come,  help  us  to  deport  and  colonize  the  negroes  and  we 
will  swap  sisters  and  brothers  with  you,  and  we  will 
soon  be  in  truth  one  people.  We  are  ready  to  give  our 
sisters  to  the  young  white  men  of  the  North  whenever 
they  can  win  them  honorably,  but,  by  the  gods,  we  never 
will  give  them  up  to  the  negroes!  Belter  let  lynchings 
continue.  Every  drop  of  the  white  man’s  blood  in  the 
South  must  be  shed  before  we  turn  our  women  over  to 
the  negroes  or  even  submit  to  equality  of  races. 

In  case  the  government  of  this  country  attempts  to 
force  us  to  equality  we  will  fight,  and  there  will  be  no 
surrender  at  Appomattox.  Any  government  that  would 
attempt  to  enforce  such  a  policy  does  not  deserve  to  live 
a  single  day. 

“  I  see  that  one  enthusiastic  Southern  gentleman  has 
renewed  the  proposition  that  we  shall  send  ten  million 
negroes  out  of  the  country.  This  is  totally  impracticable. 
Let  us  not  delude  ourselves.  We  have  got  this  question 
to  meet  squarely  at  home.  The  negro  will  stay.  The 
European  and  Asiatic  will  come.  You  cannot  turn  them 


72 


out  and  you  cannot  keep  them  out.”  —  Sen.  Hoar  of 
Massachusetts. 

I  wonder  what  the  venerable  Senator  means  when  he 
says,  (t  We  have  got  this  question  to  meet  squarely  at 
home.”  Does  he  mean  to  sit  down  and  do  nothing? 
We  have  heard  enough  talking.  Something  must  be  done. 
Talk  is  easy ! 

If  the  European  and  Asiatic  can’t  be  kept  out  of  this 
country,  then  we  will  have  some  of  the  d — n  lighting  in 
this  country  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  and  that 
before  long.  Think  of  it!  This  year,  1903,  we  get  one 
million  immigrants  from  Europe  and  Asia.  And,  strange 
to  say,  native  born  Americans  put  many  of  these  for¬ 
eigners  in  as  foremen  and  bosses  to  lord  it  over  Ameri¬ 
cans.  Let  a  laboring  man  from  this  country  go  to 
Europe  and  see  if  he  gets  to  be  a  boss.  He  will  be 
devilish  .lucky  if  he  gets  anything  to  do.  But  this  is  a 
digression,  I’ll  go  back  to  the  negro. 

As  Moses  led  the  Israelites  out  of  Egypt  so  let  some 
Moses  of  the  negro  race  lead  his  people  out  to  Egypt. 

There  is  no  better  country  in  the  world  than  Egypt 
and  Central  Africa  in  which  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain  might,  working  together,  colonize  all  their  ne¬ 
groes.  Australia  and  South  Africa,  also  the  southern  part 
of  South  America,  ought  to  be  made  the  white  man’s 
countries. 

All  Europe  and  the  whole  of  North  America  should  be 
kept  by  white  men. 

Only  a  short  while  ago  I  saw  where  some  organization 
had  allotted  certain  space  to  different  nations,  lastly 
came  negroes  and  women.  Shall  we  couple  the  name 
women,  when  it  refers  to  our  white  women,  with 
negroes?  Shame  on  the  white  men  of  this  country. 

Women  are  better  morally  than  men  (if  there  are  30,- 
000  prostitute  women  in  St.  Louis,  there  are  90,000  pros¬ 
titute  men),  and  long  before  the  negroes  of  our  country 
were  permitted  to  vote  the  white  women  should  have  been 
enfranchised. 

The  white  woman  of  wealth,  intelligence,  culture^  must 


73 


sit  at  home  while  her  ignorant  black  coachman  goes  to 
vote. 

In  the  name  of  God,  what  sort  of  men  were  they  that 
conferred  the  right  to  vote  on  negroes! 

Can  the  negro  be  transported?  Yes.  Five  hundred 
ships,  carrying  one  thousand  each  will  carry  them  away  in 
twenty  trips.  Time  required,  from  five  to  twenty  years. 
Cost:  Millions,  but  a  d  —  n sight  cheaper  than  another 
civil  war,  or  even  the  continuance  of  lawlessness. 

Where  and  how  get  the  money  and  ships?  In  London, 
X  read  in  “  Tid  Bits  ”  that  the  British  empire  alone  has 
of  all  sorts  35,000  ships.  We  can  build,  buy  and  charter 
all  the  ships  needed.  Let  the  government  turn  the  Fili¬ 
pinos  loose  and  direct  the  millions  that  are  being  wasted 
over  there  toward  this  just  and  necessary  work.  Use 
the  millions  that  we  are  about  to  appropriate  for  a  Pan¬ 
ama  canal.  Let  the  canal  go  temporarily.  Give  such 
men  as  Leigh  Hunt  encouragement.  Let  all  the  big  bugs 
and  bugesses  have  a  chance  at  it.  It  will  beat  building 
public  libraries.  Let  every  laboring  white  man  like  me 
have  a  chance  to  contribute,  and  see  the  millions  we’ll 
roll  up.  Poor  as  I  am,  I’ll  give  fifty  dollars  any  day. 
The  general  government  and  individuals  can  buy  out  all 
the  negroes  and  give  them  full  value  for  their  lands  and 
property.  There  are  ten  men  in  New  York  City  who 
can  buy  out  all  the  negroes  and  have  money  to  spare. 

The  Southern  whites  have  the  grit  to  kill  and  burn 
negroes.  Have  they  the  grit  to  take  this  bull  by  the 
horns  and  give  him  a  tussle?  Are  the  wealthy  people 
of  the  South  ready  to  clean  up  their  own  dirt  or  to  pay 
white  men  white  men’s  wages  to  do  it? 

We  must  depend  largely  upon  the  Northern  people  to 
solve  this  question  —  the  Northern  people  who  labor  for 
a  living. 

There  are  still  a  lot  of  Yankee  slave-drivers  and  they 
care  not  what  the  color  of  their  slaves  may  be,  black, 
Ted,  white,  yellow  or  brown.  From  these  Lagrees  we 
must  expect  antagonism  in  the  solution  of  this  great 
question. 

Grover  Cleveland,  whom  I  admire  above  all  other 


74 


statesmen  of  recent  years,  thinks  that  education  will 
solve  the  question.  So  it  will.  When  a  sufficient  num  - 
ber  of  the  negroes  come  to  see  through  education  the 
true  status  of  the  negrorace  in  this  country,  they  will  not 
be  satisfied  with  anything  short  of  colonization.  That 
“  education  ”  may  be  brought  about  inside  of  the  next 
twenty  years.  With  Roosevelt  in  the  White  House  things 
are  beginning  to  boil. 

With  due  respect  to  Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington,  his 
scheme  of  education  and  industrial  equality  can  never 
solve  the  race  problem.  Industrial  equality  means  event¬ 
ually  social  and  political  equality.  No  such  thing  can 
come  about.  The  whites  must  stay  above  negroes  or  go 
below  them. 

I  went  to  Cooper  Union  to  hear  Dr.  Grossman,  a  Jew. 
He  said:  “  I  never  thought  quite  so  much  of  our  Presi¬ 
dent  as  wrhen  I  heard  that  he  dared  to  break  bread  with 
a  negro.”  “  I  rather  like  the  character  of  a  Washington 
whether  his  name  be  George  or  Booker.”  What  rank 
hypocrisy!  The  Jews  refuse  to  mix  with  good  white 
Gentiles;  do  you  expect  them  to  mix  with  negroes? 

The  negroes  must  fight  for  their  freedom.  No  man  or 
race  of  men  ever  got  freedom  except  through  either 
mental  or  physical  battles. 

Eight  hundred  thousand  Moors,  men  and  women,  the 
aged  and  the  infant,  left  the  land  of  their  birth,  their 
fertile  fields,  and  their  homes  built  by  their  own  hands^, 
A  job  ten  times  as  big  may  be  accomplished  in  these 
days.  “  In  the  bright  lexicon  of  youth  there  should  be 
no  such  word  as  unattainable.”  Ours  is ayouthful nation. 

When  the  Spanish  historian  —  Las  Casas  —  in  order 
to  ameliorate  the  lot  of  the  West  Indians  suggested  the 
use  of  negroes  for  the  harder  labor  in  the  mines  of  the 
New  World,  he  inaugurated  the  cruel  slave-trade  with¬ 
out  benefitting  the  Indians. 

Thus  began  African  slavery  in  America. 

Socialism  may  come  about  when  we  get  rid  of  alien 
races,  when  we  become  as  one  in  religion,  thought,  and 
action.  An  attempt  to  engraft  socialism  on  the  present 
heterogeneous  stock  of  the  United  States  will  cause  all 


75 


sorts  of  disorder  and  fighting.  You  can’t  mix  water  and 
oil,  nor  can  you  mix  in  the  pot  of  social  equality  the  pres¬ 
ent  population  of  these  United  States,  for  socialism  in  its 
true  sense  means  the  brotherhood  of  man. 

We  must  first  improve  the  race  by  proper  breeding,  by 
culture,  then  talk  about  socialism. 

Did  Nature  want  the  negro  to  be  white?  No.  Nor 
does  she  want  a  hybrid.  Look  at  South  America.  There 
you  see  a  hybrid  race  and  continual  disorder. 

I  believe  in  one  great  God,  one  great  white  race,  one 
great  purpose  —  the  preservation  of  the  best  plant,  the 
best  animal,  the  best  race  of  men. 

What  industries  would  perish  if  the  negroes  are  de¬ 
ported? 

Lynching  bees,  those  social  crimes  that  wreck  homes 
and  fill  the  land  with  horror,  —  the  Cain  crop  generally,  I 
hope. 

White  men  can  and  will  do  any  and  all  the  work  that 
the  negroes  are  now  doing  in  the  South.  To  be  sure, 
they  will  want  better  wages.  Why  should  n’t  they?  Has  a 
laboring  man  no  right  to  aspire  to  something  better? 
Shouldn’t  he  educate  bis  children?  Shouldn’t  he  have 
sweet  music  in  his  home?  Who  wants  the  white  man  to 
live  like  a  Chinaman?  Nobody  but  a  few  blood-sucking 
leeches. 

Booker  Washington  thinks  that  in  all  things  pertaining 
to  business  aud  national  welfare  we  can  be  as  the  hand ; 
in  things  social  the  negro,  he  says,  can  be  as  the  finger. 
Not  much.  That  black  finger  of  ours  has  blood-poison 
in  it.  It  must  be  amputated  or  the  whole  arm,  the  white 
race,  may  become  diseased.  No  fungus  growths  are 
necessary  to  the  development  of  the  white  race. 

Booker  has  some  very  good  ideas  as  to  what  educa¬ 
tion  should  be.  He  got  them  from  Gen.  Armstrong  of 
Hampton  Institute.  He  complains  that,  when  his 
Tuskegee  school  fits  a  man  to  do  a  et  common  thing  in  an 
uncommon  way,”  and  sends  him  out  to  find  a  job,  the 
labor  unions  refuse  to  give  him  a  chance.  White  men 
go  on  a  strike  if  an  employer  puts  a  negro  on.  Well,  the 


76 


negroes  are  slow  indeed  if  they  don’t  soon  begin  to  see 
their  true  condition. 

“  Where  there  is  a  great  prejudice  there  is  a  great  un¬ 
derlying  principle.”  What  is  it?  I  answer,  the  culture  of 
ages  refuses  to  mix  with  coarse  vulgarity.  We  want  more 
of  the  man  and  less  of  the  beast.  More  of  the  God-like. 
Regeneration,  purification,  and  elevation  of  our  race  is 
the  need  of  the  hour.  When  alien  races  have  been  freed 
and  set  aside,  the  down-trodden  amongst  us  must  be 
lifted  up.  Some  amongst  us  must  work  more;  others 
must  work  less.  Children  must  have  pure  air,  pure 
food,  pure  literature  and  plenty  of  room. 

The  idea  given  out  by  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox  that  the 
black  girl  is  at  the  mercy  of  white  men  is  erroneous.  I 
can  only  laugh  at  the  idea  of  white  men  having  to  use 
force  on  black  women.  White  men  usually  have  solici¬ 
tations. 

Most  people  have  heard  of  the  (l  young  man’s  first 
accomplishment”  in  the  South. 

I  wonder  how  long  the  white  women  are  going  to 
submit  to  the  cheat  that  is  being  played  upon  them. 

If  I  were  a  white  woman  I  would  no  more  live  with  a 
man  who  had  business  with  black  women  than  I,  being  a 
man,  would  live  with  a  white  woman  who  has  business 
with  a  black  man.  What  is  fair  for  the  gander  ought 
to  be  fair  for  the  goose.”  The  man  or  the  woman  who 
has  lost  purity  in  any  degree  has  to  that  extent  lost 
power  to  return  the  innocent  look  of  the  child,  has  lost 
ability  to  teach  purity  of  life.  Washington’s  strength  of 
character,  f  doubt  not,  was  here.  With  all  the  brothel 
houses  of  our  cities,  and  all  the  thousands  of  negro 
wenches  running  at  large  to  tempt,  to  beg  a  chance  to 
teach  the  boys  of  our  country  u  the  first  accomplish¬ 
ment,”  how  many  pure  men  have  we  in  the  country 
to-day  ? 

I  admire  Joseph  W.  Folk,  u  the  apostle  of  civic 
righteousness  ”  in  St.  Louis.  I  believe  he  is  a  chaste 
man,  and  chastity  is  the  backbone  of  civilization.  With¬ 
out  it  we’ll  go  to  the  dogs  — to  the  devil. 

If  I  could  line  up  and  command  in  one  battle  array 


77 


every  blessed  man  and  woman  in  this  country,  my  first 
command  would  be.  About  face  I  And  the  second: 
Forward,  march,  toward  better  living!  Continue  the 
march  forever  and  earth  will  become  a  heaven ! 

Our  boys  will  mix  with  negroes,  Filipinos  and  Chinos 
till  they  lose  all  self-respect. 

God  Almighty,  the  degradation  of  the  thing!  Deliver 
us !  Give  us  back  our  good  taste,  our  high  ideals. 

There  i3  a  powder  magazine  in  the  South  and  a  little 
spark  will  touch  it  off. 

If  ever  the  government  of  the  United  States  attempts 
to  force  the  whites  of  the  South  to  accept  the  negro  as 
their  equal  I  predict  that  there  will  be  more  men  killed 
in  a  week  than  can  be  buried  in  a  month.  Besides,  the 
government  will  be  handicapped.  The  boys  in  the  army 
won’t  kill  whites  for  negroes,  and  the  laboring  people  of 
the  North  won’t  do  it. 

A  few  rich  men  and  corporations  may  hire  men  to 
fight  for  negroes  ostensibly  but  in  reality  for  themselves. 
These  insolent  rich  men  can’t  see  that  they  are  digging  a 
pit  for  their  posterity. 

The  proudest  day  this  Republic  has  ever  seen  will  be 
the  day  on  which  it  decides  to  colonize  the  negroes. 

Here  is  a  remedy  for  the  prevention  of  rapes  and 
lynching  bees:  Castrate  every  man,  black  or  white,  who 
rapes  or  attempts  to  rape  a  child  or  a  woman.  Let  every 
State  enact  such  a  law,  and  I  dare  say  this  penalty  will 
be  feared  more  than  the  rope  or  fire. 

My  object  in  collecting  information  on  the  negro 
question  or  rather  the  race  problem  is  to  make  and  keep 
the  white  race  purer,  to  breed  up,  and  to  do,  as  I  see  it, 
the  right  thing  for  the  negro.  Another  object  is  to  keep 
peace  between  the  North  and  the  South. 

I  was  born  astride  the  line  between  Rebels  and  Yan- 
kees,  and  the  United  States  are  all  my  country.  I 
helped  to  win  the  Philippines  for  this  country,  and  if  I  can 
succeed  in  giving  those  islands  back  to  the  Filipinos, 
I’ll  be  lucky.  We  often  win  things  that  we  don’t  want. 
Why  not  give  them  back? 


78 


If  I  am  wroDg  on  the  race  problenTmy  whole  life  is 
wrong.  My  conception  of  the  universe  and  the  God  that 
dominates  all  things  is  wrong. 

I  never  felt  surer  that  I  was  right  when  I  voted  against 
free  silver  and  for  Wm.  McKinley  than  I  do  now,  and  on 
the  stand  I  have  taken  on  the  race  problem  I  will  stake 
my  life.  I  challenge  any  man  to  show  me  a  fairer  or 
more  lasting  solution  for  the  question  —  unless  we  kill  off 
all  alien  races. 


APPENDIX. 


u  The  religion  of. the  Twentieth  Century  will  be  charac¬ 
terized  by  a  sense  of  the  real  presence  of  the  living  God. 
That  this  is  true  is  seen  in  the  prominence  of  the  study 
of  natural  science  in  our  schools  increasing  in  the  past 
fifty  years. 

u  The  wonders  of  God  as  seen  in  nature  stand  revealed 
to  our  children.  The  religion  that  acknowledges  the 
real  presence  of  God  sees  him  in  his  handiwork,  in  the 
wind  that  cools  and  refreshes,  in  the  breakfast  of  the 
morning  that  gives  strength  to  do  the  day’s  work. 

“  If  we  would  preserve  this  Republic  and  foster  its 
influence  as  a  nation  we  must  cling  to  the  ideals  of  our 
fathers,  because  they  were  the  eternal  principles  of  the 
personal  God.  Man  is  a  gregarious  animal.  He  cannot 
live  alone  and  cherish  an  ideal.  He  must  have  compan¬ 
ionship  with  his  fellows.  Robinson  Crusoe  is  impossible 
as  a  fact.  A  man  who  lived  so  long  alone  would  become 
a  beast.  The  American  people  must  be  *  each  for  all 
and  all  for  each,’  and  the  great  God  over  all. 

“  So  far  as  we  do  not  want  our  children  to  know 
whence  comes  our  wealth,  so  far  are  we  drifting  toward 
the  twilight,  and  after  that  cometh  the  night.”  —  Dr. 
Edward  Everett  Hale. 


(79) 


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